The expansive dimensions of the Waterfront Theatre offer a grand setting for ATC’s spectacular and highly entertaining production of Peter Shaffer’s celebrated stage play.  

Amadeus uses a fictionalised account of Mozart’s career in Vienna as the springboard for a compelling psychological study of the destructive power of envy.

A boldly conceived set design by Ella Mizrahi eschews the grandeur of the period and conjures up a surreal dream-scape that focuses attention on the inner workings of the artistic imagination.  

Oliver Driver’s direction orchestrates the talents of a diverse group of practitioners to present an exuberantly theatrical interpretation of the play. [More] 

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Just six years after Peter Shaffer shattered the English establishment with the award-winning psycho-thriller Equus, he unleashed this extraordinarily provocative, historically-inspired reinterpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; like Equus, Amadeus was to receive a Tony Award and an Academy Award nomination for translation to cinema.

It was bound to polarise audiences who adored the composer, as it framed Mozart in the myopic, jealous view of Hapsburg Court Composer Antonio Salieri, whose comfortable sinecure world was upended by the appearance of “the obscene child” upstart whose music was about to expose his (Salieri’s) mediocrity and fuel his corruption. Delicious.

Inventively, director Oliver Driver has inlaid dance and rock music elements to create a total new production concept around the story of Mozart as told by his nemesis Salieri. He believed that, true to his middle name, Mozart was God’s magic flute, delivering divine music directly to humankind.

In this ATC production, Michael Hurst, in the pivotal role of Salieri, is playwright Peter Shaffer’s textual instrument, delivering with unfaltering energy and intelligence the existential questions posed in the brilliant invention that is Amadeus. He has deep footsteps in which to tread, including the role’s originator Paul Scofield, and Sir Ian McKellen, at England’s National Theatre.

It is challenging that we are introduced to Mozart as he chases his fiancée Constanze in a crude game of cat-and-mouse, oopah-ed with farts, right under the nose of Salieri who hovers, horrified. Hurst is magnificent, sometimes coiled as a spring of Machiavellian manipulation and evil wound up and ready to erupt in an intense soliloquy (something of which he is a master), other times oiling the audience as he addresses us, the “ghosts of the future” seeking not forgiveness for his Salieri, but understanding.

Despite its musical roots, Amadeus is as much a symphony of language as of any other stage form, and with his Shakespearean pack of skills firmly slung on his back, Hurst gives a gripping, infinitely shaded, indelible performance that is seminal, visceral and sometimes infernal as it reveals a Faustian pact with God – or perhaps it is really the devil. This is done without any descent into melodrama or self-indulgence, a brink that the emotive and introspective monologues keeps alarmingly close, and upon which he balances with all the skill of a tightrope walker.

The grand themes require no explanation: the inexplicable and seemingly unjust favour of an often-silent God, the line between madness and genius, the futility of under-resourced ambition and the self-destruction to which it can lead. By contrast, the vanity of ambition even when generously resourced, that can also pave the road to hell or to heaven. Grand indeed, and wrought thoroughly through with beautiful language.

Body language is another thread of this production, with dancer/choreographer Ross McCormack infusing his role of Mozart, and the production in general, with movements that are sometimes balletic, often athletic, and at one point choreographed as a nod to formal Viennese ballroom dancing.  Like the ballet interlude that in some periods was de rigueur in opera, these tableaux add texture and relief. Additional variation is provided by the levels within the set, especially three elevated platforms from which the influential courtiers of the day deliver their pronouncements. They rise from a cloud of white, crumpled manuscript sheets that are like pulpits on Olympus.

This brings me to the set itself, designed by Ella Mizrahi. The snow-drift of score sheets, poking out from the curtain hem as we enter, has immediate impact, and on curtain-up becomes metaphorically rich. Shaped, coloured and tempered by clever and well-aimed lighting, the “cage of ink strokes” sometimes looks like a rubbish dump, sometimes like clouds behind which God forges his thunderbolts, and other times like the ice carving from the grand buffet night on a cruise ship. 

While placing musicians on stage is not new for this work, among the papered tumbleweed of treble clefs and textured bas relief, musicians, ensemble and principals cleverly pop up like saints in an Advent calendar, sometimes with wigs, sometimes with headphones. Even the Emperor, played with gay abandon by a lean Byron Coll clad in an imperial purple/blue velveteen curtain, appears playing guitar and keyboard. However, by act two the set has lost its novelty for me, sometimes impeding the flow of action as the actors traverse its tracks. Our engagement would have benefitted from a staging refresh or re-shape between acts. 

Inevitably a major thread is music, and here lies the show’s potential Achilles heel. Calmly presiding musically through the paper clouds from his computer and keyboard is Leon Radojkovic. His pedigree includes the memorable ATC production of Superstar. To him falls the task of imagining how Mozart might have chosen to realise his compositions today, given access to our instruments and technology.

Among his 11-strong brigade are bass guitar, synthesisers, viola, violins, cello, trumpet, reeds and percussion. I like the impact he creates with some driving riffs and yet giving space for just enough familiar Mozart melody lines to remind us of the genius. A pair of audience-facing sconce lights smack in the middle of the set are irksome, otherwise the mostly obscured musicians are highlighted selectively and sparingly. 

Weaving these threads together defines how well this production of inventive elements actually works, and that stitching naturally falls to the acting ensemble. They cover a range from the aforementioned consummate Michael Hurst through to a somewhat forced performance by one of the three ‘gods’ of the court, Laughton Kora, who, by the way, has a rich and impressive singing voice.

His companions are the very talented Kura Forrester, who plays the librarian courtier and Freemasons’ friend to Mozart, Baron van Sweiten, with aplomb. The other is Morgana O’Reilly as Chamberlain Count van Strack, who also gives us a Cockney influenced Constanze Mozart (“ta very much”) with an earthiness to match her husband’s lack of guile and decorum.

Ross McCormack’s physical and nimble Mozart is assured dramatically as well, all the more impressive as his career has been more in dance than acting. He also avoids the excesses offered by the script; it would be so easy to caricature the giggling childish elements and not attend to the more difficult waterfall of musical ideas that tumble from Mozart almost like the words of a patter song. This he handles with admirable control and clear delivery.

Topping it off in a fabulous red classically operatic gown is soprano Madison Nonoa as Salieri’s ‘protégé’ Katherina Cavalieri, who elevates the musicality and illustrates the power of the music.

Director Driver has chosen to leave the figure of Salieri for the most part in his old age, swanked up at court, just a touch, by a tunic and boots. This avoids dealing visually with the time fluidity that was so well handled in the movie, but it demands an even more chameleon performance from Michael Hurst, which he gives in abundance.

There are scenes I felt could have been staged better. When Mozart offers to revise Salieri’s welcome salute (which becomes ‘Non Piu Andrai’ in The Marriage of Figaro), he pulls it together from the popped up musicians, but doing it personally at the keyboard, as in the movie, would illustrate his precociousness more convincingly. There are times, such as when Salieri addresses God with his back to the audience, that the blocking also seems a bit aimless.

The editing required to trim the show down by almost a third has given us just too little night music, which has some audience members grizzling about the deprivation, although snatches of Don Giovanni, Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro are well featured and played, and received with gratitude.

Almost inevitable radio mic glitches are soldiered through, and the theatre carries the show well with carefully calculated amplification that is quickly tweaked when the rock band endangeresd the overlaid dialogue. Still in its honeymoon, the venue overall continues to impress, especially with its front of house offerings and enthusiastic patron interaction. It’s a theatre with good food and wine – that’s rare. The sight of manager Geeling Ching prancing with traffic cones on the street to discipline the swarm of taxis after a show is a sight to rival Friday on K Rd.

In summary, it is a most entertaining night out. This slimmed-down production of Amadeus imaginatively preserves the core and thrust of Shaffer’s heroic piece, with the virtuoso performance of Michael Hurst as Salieri offering a masterclass in energy, character distillation and conviction. It will be one of the most talked-about theatre pieces of the year and a continuing accolade to the re-creation of a waterfront home for Auckland Theatre Company.

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