WHEN YOU THINK of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer’s perfectly wonderful play of 1979 that cast mischievous light into the mysterious nooks and untold crannies of the life of 18th century Vienna composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the first thing that comes to mind is the music, that Confutatis from Mozart’s haunting Requiem should fill your mind’s ear to the hilt and raise the goosebumps on your flesh in anticipation. There’s currently a staging of Amadeus at Montecasino until 7 April, and then at Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town, 12 April-18 May 2024.
Aidan Scott is a completely superb Mozart, nimbly blending crudity with that understanding of brilliance, that speaks of performers of the ilk of Hugh Laurie or Martin Clunes – portraying a character not without social flaws, but one who speaks to your inner child directly and without foible. The work features a wonderful skeleton of a piano or harpsichord that mostly doesn’t offer performers miming the act of playing and allows for the magic to take shape in the air around the instrument, evocative of the set itself, cast as it is amidst a maelstrom of music gorgeously and surreally caught in suspended animation.
Alan Committie’s Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s nemesis in this play, and the official court composer of his day, while it touches on all the revolting elements of excessive lust for Italian sweetmeats, eavesdropping and professional jealousy taken up a level in the madness stakes, paints a character which begs for more extremes. He’s nasty, but you want nastier. He’s hypocritical and gets Mozart to weep on his shoulder, while he’s plotting the poor bloke’s untimely demise, but you want him to be even worse. It’s like there are moments when Committie, the stand-up comic, is there alongside Salieri, and the two argue, genteelly, to make you laugh.
The ensemble cast is on the whole strong and frisky, occasionally stooping to wooden in their reflection on characters big and small in the tale, but it is their choreography and stage work that holds the piece, lending it a sense of community and almost Shakespearean properness, numbering just eight performers, as they do. However, it is the absence of ‘breathing spaces’ in the articulated text that doesn’t allow the music the presence it deserves. You yearn to turn down the volume of the speakers, so that the music can be heard, untrammelled, or in a layer distinct from that of the voices. Instead, the volume of the voices is raised: they shout; and the music is broken against your ear.
Maybe this is a casualty of the fact that the music is piped and not live on the stage. It’s difficult to assess, but a strange omission in a work of this nature. As with Amadeuses on the level of Margot Luyt’s radio theatre production, Milos Forman’s 1984 vintage film or that of the National Theatre, with the delightful Lucian Msamati in the role of Salieri, it has always been the music which has been dignified with the presence of a cast member, a soundscape and the ability to haunt and thrill you all the way down to your theatre-loving and Mozart-loving toes. It just doesn’t happen here.
- Amadeus is directed by Geoffrey Hyland and written by Peter Shaffer. Produced by Gloucester Productions in partnership with Carolyn Steyn and Siv Ngesi, it features creative input by Illka Louw (costumes), Oliver Hauser (lighting), Nadine Minnaar (set) and Gideon Lombard (sound) and is performed by Léa Blerk, Alan Committie, Andreas Damm, Miguel de Sampaio, Mark Elderkin, Phumi Mncayi, Aidan Scott and Lisa Tredoux, at the Pieter Toerien Theatre, Montecasino, Fourways, until 6 April and at Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town from 12 April to 18 May 2024.