AMADEUS. In rep to 17 October.

Pitlochry

AMADEUS
by Peter Shaffer

Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 17 October 2002
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 2pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS 01796 484626
boxoffice@pitlochry.org.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 28 August

A surpisingly intimate staing proves all to the good for Shaffer's play. Given Peter Hall's operatic Olivier Theatre premiere of Shaffer's play, Richard Baron's revival shows how surprisingly compact it can be. This is one of the less sweeping stagings, spatially speaking, in this year's Pitlochry season. And that's all to the good, preventing what's essentially a kind of thriller with philosophic overtones seeming overblown.

This is less a whodunnit, than a WhyAndHowIDidIt. Plodding 18th century composer Salieri, studious and conscientious, has a bargain with God, who first seems to give him his ambition - to be a success with his music. Then turns it sour when a childish, foulmouthed youth called Mozart comes along , apparently able to produce the sublimest sounds without either effort or any sense of moral, let alone cosmological, responsibility - but making Salieri aware of his own inevitable mediocrity.

Ken Harrison's set keeps the upstage, rear area for a limited number of grand moments - grand not in their actual staging, but in the characters' public lives. The result is a focus on private passions, and a close relationship between Salieri and we 'ghosts of the future' he summons up with the aid of houselights.

This is important. Without Salieri's preoccupations and viewpoint consistently before us, he would be the villain, destroying Mozart financially and psychologically, out of jealousy and in his combat against the God he sees as reneging on their agreement.

Michael Mackenzie mixes passion and controlled fury with moments of sardonic reflection, successfully holding on to sympathy without losing pace.

A major production decision with the play has to be how much we are aware of seeing characters and events through Salieri's eyes, just as it's his version of events to which we listen. Jimmy Chisholm's vapid monarch seems just right for the composer's view of a ruler who would believe anything Salieri told him on music. Dougal Lee's prime Masonic mover and musical arch-conservative is similarly convincing as a formidable figure - someone whose influence and aristocratic distaste for Mozart's buffooneries make him a potent Salieri ally -yet always with a slightly ridiculous touch to his solemn old-fashioned tastes.

But the main question lies with Mozart, whose behaviour's long been known from his letters. He has moments of awareness of his music's greatness, and fear of his father, neither ofwhich seem especially distilled through distortion by Salieri. Is this the younger composer seen plain? Or does Salieri not register these aspects of his unconscious rival? This is unlikely as he plays on the father-fear in the end.

However, Baron's production is both the thumpingly-paced entertainment Pitlochry's audiences doubtless want (it's a good sight more gripping than Christie's vapid Hollow) and an interesting meditation on how damnably unfair genius can seem to those of us who just have to keep on hoping.

The Venticelli: Guy Fearon, Gavin Kean
Salieri's Valet/Major-Domo: Richard Keynes
Salieri's Cook/Count Orsini-Rosenberg: Moray Treadwell
Antonio Salieri: Michael Mackenzie
Joseph II: Jimmy Chisholm
Johann Kilian von Strack: John Buick
Baron von Swieten: Dougal Lee
Kapellmeister Bonno: Frank Martin/Iain McEwan
Katherina Cavalieri: Jo Freer
Constanze Weber: Helen Logan
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Matt Blair

Director: Richard Baron
Designer/Costume: Ken Harrison
Lighting: Mark Pritchard
Sound: Jon Beales

2002-08-30 17:07:48