Peter Shaffer : Amadeus
National Theatre
Southbank Sinfonia
Simon Slater, music director
Directed by Michael Longhurst
Like the last play I saw in an NT Live broadcast, Amadeus started out as a stage play, made a star of one of its principals (Simon Callow, in this instance), and five years later was turned into an Oscar-winning film, in an adaptation by the playwright himself. Unlike Dangerous Liaisons, the differences between play and film are quite substantial, however, though Salieri's principal monologues remain, thankfully, intact, and what we saw tonight was, very clearly, a play, with the elisions of situation that cannot be reproduced on film, and Salieri speaking directly to the audience, to us fellow mediocrities, of whom he proclaims himself the patron saint, again, a procedure that would not really work in the context of a film.
The staging of Amadeus is particularly ingenious, because the small orchestra which supplies the (very essential) music is fully integrated, on-stage, into the action. They are almost a kind of non-verbal Greek chorus, in black modern dress, but sometimes also appearing as costumed extras. The music was, of course, mostly Mozart, but often adapted very cleverly. The first movement of Symphony No. 25 became a raucous New Year's Eve rave, while The Magic Flute underwent a similar transformation/modernisation, precisely in order to make the point that it was intended as up-to-date, popular entertainment for the regular citizens of Vienna, rather than the aristocracy. There were half a dozen good singers, to give voice to various snippets of arias, ensembles, and choral pieces, two of whom had named (if non-speaking) roles, Fleur de Bray as the soprano Caterina Cavalieri, and Wendy Dawn Thompson as Salieri's wife.
Most of the actors were in period costume, though the Mozarts' costumes had a distinct hint of the steam-punk about them, as well as being on the gaudy side. There was very little actual decor, as such, but a very flexible disposition of the semi-circular apron of the stage, with a stepped dais at the back that could slide forward, while part of the stage floor could sink into an orchestra pit, leaving a catwalk edging it at the front. Some scenic elements could be rolled on and off stage, while various props and items of furniture also appeared and disappeared as required. The whole worked seamlessly, very well lit, transitions so effortless as to pass virtually unnoticed.
Although there is a fair number of people on stage, there are not actually that many speaking characters in the play, and all were really very good. Tom Edden gave a nicely judged turn as Joseph II, always a little impatient, while Geoffrey Beevers was excellent as the pompously well-intentioned, but very conservative Baron van Swieten. On the other hand, although it was a strong reading, I found Karla Crome's Constanze a bit too low-rent; in a production where a fair amount of foreign languages (mostly Italian) were spluttered about, and both Salieri and Mozart had faint accents indicative of geographical origins, her repeated "Ta very much" was jarringly Cockney, more Eliza Doolittle than Constanze Mozart.
Shaffer's Mozart is, I think, a difficult role to play. We are meant, on the one hand, to sympathise with Salieri's shock, to perceive with him the apparent disconnect between the genius of the composer, and the irresponsible and infantile individual, and find it incomprehensible. On the other, Mozart's iconoclastic nature, his constant pushing of boundaries, on all levels, should also be appealing, and there, I felt, Adam Gillen didn't quite fit the bill. Behind the asinine humour, the tantrums and impatience and arrogance, there should be at least a hint of the passion and conviction that creates the music, all-devouring to the point that social conventions mean nothing to him, and that did not come across. Even his death scene (which is quite different from the film), when Mozart describes how he feels the music is slipping away from him as his physical condition deteriorates, didn't carry any real sense of pathos, because at no point previously had I been completely convinced of the presence of the music in his soul in the first place.
However, Gillen was a fairly good foil to the richly textured Salieri of Lucian Msamati, and it is, after all, Salieri one comes to see in Amadeus. It is his play, from start to finish - there are only two or three short scenes in which he is not really present, and even then, he's still on stage, observing from the side. A tormented mass of contradictions, most of which he's perfectly well aware of himself, this was an absorbing performance, credible, painful at times, not exactly sympathetic, because the character is too bitter to be sympathetic, but comprehensible, in all his fury and frailties. There was humour there too, dryly self-directed in many cases, impeccably timed, while the delivery of the two big monologues - the 'discovery' of Mozart, the clash of man with music, set to the Adagio from the Gran Partita, and then the epiphany, over the scores, and the challenge to God, that ends Act 1 - was pitch perfect. Msamati was worth the price of admission all by himself; well supported and surrounded as he was in this production, there was nothing mediocre to be seen here.
[Next : 4th February]
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