AMADEUS
by Peter Shaffer

Performed by Lancaster University Theatre Group
at The Nuffield, University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster
Tuesday 8 to Thursday 10 February 2005

A play of great depth with an extraordinary production to match

There are some plays – only a very few, admitted – which somehow make a greater impression on those who attend them than do other plays. I can recollect only some dozen or so outstanding performances in nearly forty years of theatre-going.

Regular readers of this site will know that I have diligently attended everything Lancaster University Theatre Group (LUTG) has put on since December 2003, and the quality of these performances has been consistently excellent, in varying degrees.

But this performance is one that both John and I will remember for a very long time. There are several reasons for this response: first, it is a fine play (and a revelation after seeing the Milos Forman 1984 film, let me tell you!) which offers fascinating insights and raises some major social, political, religious and other issues.

Second, and not least because it is a long piece (after a 7.30 start it was after 10.30 when the curtain came down), director Laurence Brown gave the audience an intelligent, fine, elegantly-balanced and wonderfully sustained production, during which time passed unnoticed as Shaffer's fine story unfolded. Staging, costume and lighting all served the director's overall concept and design well.

Third, and following on from the first two points, the cast did a simply superb and highly professional job. The two main protagonists (antagonists?), Rich Booth as a marvellous manic, moody and ultimately morbid Mozart, and Jon Adams as Antonio Salieri, the increasingly demented prime mover of the drama.

A newcomer to Lancaster, Booth (who dazzled as the Maniac in Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist last year) had the balance of the complex character of Mozart just right. He played the comedy and the composer's inability to put up with mediocrity (whether as Emperor, court official, brother Mason or whoever) so much better than the crass and shallow efforts from Tom Hulce. The film version, I have to say, is not a patch on the stage play.

Adams, who also played a manic role in Popcorn last term, was an epic Salieri, and remained on stage throughout the whole of the performance. This is a remarkable achievement, and one that many better-known actors and celebrities fight shy of. On television and on the silver screen there is no demand for that level of stamina (alright, the demands are different), but to keep an audience involved for that length of time is just amazing, given that the average attention span of an adult is reckoned to be only twenty minutes.

I discuss these roles at some length because the entire play deals with the relationship, the dynamics and the interplay between the two, and with their Maker as well. Mozart, more impoverished as his career progressed (due to no fault of his own but to changing tastes and fashions in an unsettled Imperial capital – Vienna – in the 1780s and 1790s), also suffered physical as well as economic decline. He finally died, leaving a mere 60 Guilder (not even a month's salary) in ready cash, and debts to the tune of many times that paltry sum.

The ways in which the characters develop, change and move on in response to what is happening around them (and in their own minds, particularly with the increasingly demented Salieri) were painstakingly and intelligently portrayed in this masterly performance. Mozart and his beloved wife, Constanze, deliciously played by Sophie Nichols (pass me some more Capezzoli di Venere, please dear), live through the usual ups and downs that happen to anyone else, but Salieri's path is more complex, less attractive and ultimately more painfully destructive than followed by most people during their allotted span.

The other members of the twenty-strong cast demand notice too. Even the least significant character was credibly portrayed, and there were some dignified performances from, for example, the sniffy benevolence of the Holy Roman Emperor, Josef II, played by a very young Phil "There it is' Reid with an enlightened dignity few can muster, even in their fifties. Other court roles were also finely-drawn cameos.

Also of note were the two Venticelli (‘little winds', town gossips, bad angels, choric commentators) of Kate Thomas and Sarah Price, whose delivery of and diction in the opening lines immediately reassured me that this was going to be a cracker of an evening.

And so it was. This is the most memorable production I have seen since I came to Lancaster, and it is hard to think back – beyond and before Scarborough – to a show that has moved me so much in the last decade.

Given that some of the cast are not yet twenty one, and the production the result of only some five weeks' work, this was theatre of a very high order indeed.

Copyright © 10 February 2005 Michael Nunn

Capezzoli di Venere; ‘Nipples of Venus', or sweetmeats made of "Roman chestnuts in brandied sugar'