Review: Amadeus

Vienna, Austria, November 1823. An all-exposing white spotlight shines on the masqueraded Dylan Swain (as Salieri), whose hands are tied together by what look like knotty white bandages. He lurches forward, in silent pain, on the wooden chair upstage centre in the music-turned-performance space of the Laidlaw. The resounding 24-piece orchestra fills the room like the cream in the Fisher and Donaldson doughnuts metres away from my beady eyes. Positioned on a cake-stand, they rest above strewn pieces of sheet music on the floor and a lantern. 

Downstage right, another cake-stand, next to flowers, and a chair. This is the controlled chaos of the set, representative perhaps of Salieri’s mind: filled with envy and lust desperately repressed under the façade of normalcy. Aside from two black boxes, everything else in the set remained static. Strictly minimalist, unlike the flamboyant period costumes, with their thrills (of lace) and spills (of Lila Patterson and Kritvi Gupta’s make-up pot). As director Aidan Monks said in the programme notes, the aim was to accurately recreate the “1700s on a shoestring budget.”

As a reviewer, I should really retain a sense of democracy in giving equal airtime to each actor; however, I must spend a second commending Swain’s saturnine Salieri. Swain commanded the stage with the air of that (not-so) famous court composer and implored the audience to “be [his] confessors.” There is no doubt that we were immediately engrossed in Salieri’s story and thus bore witness to all of his internal — and infernal — thoughts, exposed to us in his position as narrator and orchestrator of the plot. 

Swain looked the front row in the eye on several occasions, squatting down to meet us on the same level. We — the audience — were forced to listen to his rants of blazing jealousy (“like a comet across the firmament of Europe”) due to his breaking of the fourth wall. The caprice of Salieri and his “pure satanic connoisseurship,” as one Guardian review put it, were tangible in Swain’s tone, pace, and facial expression. Swain secured his place at the top of St Andrews’ list of “best student actors” — watch out, world!

Iha Jha and Rebecca Ravara’s sycophantic venticelli were fabulously gossipy and took on the same role as the audience, observing the action, often sitting amongst the orchestra with their backs to the action (a directorial choice I struggled to understand). Yet they were also active participants in the plot, taking on other roles and, most importantly, were relentlessly obsequious to their ‘master,’ Salieri.

Then the action turned to the entrance of the three courtiers on the balcony, an ingenious device that Monks would utilise across the play, inevitably placing more attention on the action in that site, but also making hierarchical hints, physically placing Mozart above Salieri in certain instances. These three men were, as Salieri called the marvellously stuffy Van Sweiten (Andrew Ibarra), “yet to find anything funny.” The equally stiff Count Rosenberg (Matthew Clegg) complemented Ibarra humorously, alongside Von Strack (Lara Kassat).

Meow! In comes Mozart (Callum Wardman-Browne) and his kittenishly devoted wife Constanze, or Stanzi (Hanna Ward), both playing cat and mouse. Ward’s performance was deeply poignant, and we wept with her as she was pulled between the two hubristic men. Tom Hulce’s iconic performance of Mozart in the 1984 film was an impossibly hard act to follow. But one thing’s for sure, Wardman-Browne got Mozart’s nitrogen squeal and child-like energy. Wardman-Browne presented us with a more serious, solemn Mozart at other points, however, with much less fervour and arrogance than Hulce. The most humorous character was the dazzlingly camp Emperor Joseph II (Aubrey McCance). McCance added a notably eccentric flavour to the character of the Emperor, with his enormous white wig toppling over his expressive face and voice reminiscent of David Walliams’ ‘I’m a lady sketch’ in Little Britain. The risk was that the Emperor’s eccentricity, at times, upstaged Mozart himself. The other risk for any actor is shout-acting, and there were a few moments bordering on this too. Although perhaps, just like Count Rosenberg, “I don’t understand. Is it modern?”

Commendation is due to Willa Meloth and her lighting, with highlights including Mozart’s illumination in white downstage right, with Salieri in red (stage left), and the moment when a different part of the audience was lit for each concert venue in which we were involved. The spoken sections whilst the music played in the background were highlights for me and the lav mics were a genius idea, allowing us to hear Salieri over the orchestra. We were also able to sample an original Mozartian aria and its “ten minutes of scales and ornament,” with the crystal voice of Eleanor White. The orchestra became part of the action as, at the end of both acts, they left their seats like expressionless shadows lining up at the side of the stage. It was as if the spirits of music had left Mozart’s head forever as the light dimmed, submersing the audience in a pit of darkness.

Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus is by no means a straightforward play to put on, especially in the Laidlaw, however Monks and Ava Pegg-Davies (producer) stunned the audience with their mesmeric production. They reconciled the play’s contrasts of composer on composer, Italian vs German, God vs mortal, narrator vs audience, and private vs public in one great masterpiece. So, why don’t you come along to the Laidlaw this Sunday at 2pm and see for yourself the “fêtes and fireworks” of Amadeus?

Photo coutesy of Kritvi Gupta