Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, directed by Tessa Bremner for Free-Rain. Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre August 4 - August 21. Canberra Ticketing 6275 2700.
This is a show you should not miss, for several reasons.
Bremner's direction is tight, stylish and perfectly suited to Shaffer's intentions. In the intimate setting of the Courtyard, the 18th Century operatic characters come to life more than they might on a larger stage. Costumes and make-up are original, comic, pointedly satirical. Lighting highlights characters and mood on a set designed for smooth changes, uncluttered yet always interesting.
The acting is highly polished, easily as good as many fully professional productions, in a play which requires strong, clear resonant voices - including singing - as well as choreographed movement and even playing Salieri and Mozart on piano. The whole cast works as a well-trained ensemble whose excitement in performing spreads throughout the theatre, drawing you into this awful story of how Salieri destroyed Mozart.
The play itself is a reason to go. It is so much better than the film, balancing Mozart's sublime imagination expressed in his music against Salieri's desperate need to break free from the mediocrity he recognises in his own work. We see Salieri not simply as an evil figure against Mozart's perfection, but as a man who will survive, though to do so he must destroy the innocent.
On stage, the play breaks the bounds of the ordinary to show us the nature of life and art, just as Mozart did through his music. And it is a special achievement for a small company like Free-Rain that their production in this unpretentious little space could, by artful design, take my mind beyond the immediate cardboard, paint and bits of wire to a terrible feeling of loss as Mozart dies.
As in Mozart's Figaro and The Magic Flute, it is the clever use of humour which elicits the sense of tragedy. This is where Bremner has the right touch. A production which takes the work too seriously would become maudlin, but here a deftly timed movement, a visual joke, a tableau which becomes an orchestra for Mozart to conduct, a threatening look from Salieri's wife, in fact a constant array of humorous devices keeps us at just the right distance emotionally until the key moments when we both understand and feel the truth. This is what good theatre is all about.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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