MOZART'S NACHTMUSIK by Rolf Hochhuth. Glasgow Citizens'.

Glasgow

MOZART'S NACHTMUSIK
by Rolf Hochhuth, translated by Robert David MacDonald

Circle Studio, Glasgow Citizens' To 17 November 2001
Runs 1hr 50min One interval

TICKETS 0141 429 0022
Review Timothy Ramsden 25 October

Intrigue, love – and hate - in Enlightenment Germany as Mozart's bones are raked over once more.Mozart's Funeral Music it might be called. Hochhuth's investigatory plays have alleged the Catholic church cosied up to Nazism and that Churchill connived at the death of the Polish wartime leader Sikorski. Now he targets Mozart's presumed murderer. If that seems a less capacious subject, well, it's a smaller-scale than The Representative or Soldiers. And, the relative importance of the lordly mighty and the humble genius is a theme of the new piece.

In Amadeus Peter Shaffer memorably fingered the composer Salieri's professional jealousy as the motive for the greater composer's poisoning. Hochhuth spotlights a more personal rival, court lawyer Franz Hofdemel. The motive was sexual jealousy; Frau Hofdemel was Mozart's pupil and the libidinous genius apparently instilled more than pianism in her.

A first act of marital cross-accusation sees Brendan Hooper's stolid Hofdemel continually downgrading Mozart, the 'clapped-out, down-at-heel' fellow whose own wife had run off with a pupil. Anne-Marie Timoney's Magdalena contemptuously twists her husband's torment up the pain scale to such a pitch things end not in tears but death.

Franz is the victim, but his tormentor does not come off unscarred. When the first act black is adorned post-interval with imperial gold, it's a bandaged-wrist, stiff-necked Magdalena who petitions the Emperor - an ornately adorned Tristram Wymark, the epitome of royal self-control and political calculation – for Mozart to be removed from his out-of-town pauper's grave.

This gives Hochhuth the chance to relish the way a simple request is caught in a net of political considerations. Even if the answer comes out as desired, it's no longer possible to be sure of the reason.

Robert David MacDonald steers the argument through both the first half's open emotions and the later intrigue. No major discovery maybe, but worth an outing to the Gorbals and a welcome sign the Citizens' still explores areas of the modern repertory seemingly unknown to too many of our theatres.

Franz Hofdemel: Brendan Hooper
Magdalena Hofdemel: Anne Marie Timoney
Emperor Leopold II: Tristram Wymark

Director: Robert David MacDonald
Designer: Philip Witcomb
Lighting: Fleur Woolford

2001-11-06 17:41:18