Cleveland favorite Andrew May stars as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus, the opening production of Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Fall Repertory. Amadeus runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s As You Like It through October 22 at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square Center. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)

Musical rivalry is Great Lakes Offering
By Art Thomas
happenings
Published Oct. 5, 2005

A quarter century ago, Peter Schaffer made a hit on Broadway with his non-musical play about musicians. “Amadeus” explores the rivalry between eighteenth century composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Currently, the play is on stage at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in repertory with Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”.

Salieri was hailed in his own time. He was the court composer for Joseph II of Austria. Upstart Wolfgang was seen as talented, but not as good. In fact, time has reversed their places in musical history. The workmanship of Salieri is placed nowhere near the genius of Mozart. “Amadeus” looks at the relationship between the composers largely from Salieri’s perspective. He in fact did recognize Mozart’s genius compared to his lesser abilities.

Young, impetuous, potty-mouthed, oversexed, and brilliant. Those are the qualities Shaffer imbues Mozart with and exactly what Ben Nordstrom relishes in his hyper-kinetic performance as Mozart. He formulates compositions completely in his head and then writes them out without any changes. His marriage to Costanze is based on a bright flash paper fire that has nothing underneath it for later support.

Salieri has issues not only with Mozart, but also with God who granted genius to this obnoxious upstart and not to Antonio who has served God faithfully.

“Amadeus” demands complete theatricality. In the Great Lakes production, director Gordon Reinhart has a proscenium on the proscenium stage, a monstrous oversized bust of Mozart that haunts Salieri, and directs just about everyone in the cast to face the audience directly. This, and then some, is what the play demands.

Andrew May as Salieri sometimes rants and sometimes is introspective. He sits in a wheelchair and sometimes leaps from it. He curses God and sucks up to Dougfred Miller’s bland Joseph II. He does all of this with the best of his technique-driven performance, but somehow it still seems like it isn’t enough. We need even more theatricality. In Salieri, we also need something that rises above pure technical acting and has the anguish of a true introspective view.

Other roles are handled with similar energy and all of the performances are good but not great. By the time we get down to the servants, mostly Equity candidates, they are given to fits of mugging directly toward the audience.

One of the production’s best elements is Stan Kozak’s phenomenal sound which eminates from an apparently endless variety of locations and suggest a spectrum of emotional responses.

Ann Hoste’s costumes and Gage Williams’ set are sumptuous renditions of the elegant European period in which the play is set. They meet the high standards we have seen in Great Lakes design the last few years.

“Amadeus” runs through October 22.