Theater Review: Utah Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Amadeus’ illuminates Salieri’s treachery

The title references the incomparable prodigal genius responsible for over 600 classical works, whose name is synonymous with the finest body of 18th century music of the Viennese school, but the play “Amadeus” is no biography of the legendary Mozart. As fans of Peter Shaffer’s play and the popular 1984 Oscar-winning film upon which it is based already know, “Amadeus” focuses on Mozart’s contemporary—the Italian classical composer, conductor, and teacher Antonio Salieri—who spent his adult life as a subject of the Hapsburg monarchy in Austria. Salieri, in the play’s heavily-fictionalized account, is both tormented and awestruck by Mozart’s brilliance and baffled by the younger composer’s vulgarity.

The Utah Shakespeare Festival production of “Amadeus” is both exquisite in design and elegant in execution. In the opening soliloquy, Salieri, portrayed with boisterous conviction by festival co-artistic director David Ivers, is old and wheelchair-bound and asks the audience to travel back 32 years to 1781. That’s where he first meets a young Mozart and where Salieri’s salacious jealousy and anger with God begin, for how could such a little “creature” compose music that was like the “voice of God” himself?

Mozart is performed by Tasso Feldman with potty-mouthed glee, but he manages to be aptly and achingly sympathetic when necessary. The ensemble cast, like the finely-tailored costumes, is flawless, in particular Betsy Mugavero as Constanze, Mozart’s dutiful fiancée who is willing to sacrifice everything to help her ailing love even as the couple sinks into poverty. The show’s two primary failings rest with the overly long script that dawdles in the opening scenes and the lack of music, though there a few brilliant harpsichord pieces. Ivers is known for his abundant comic sensibilities, and they are only hinted at here, a stylistic choice. But there’s no question that he brings the treachery of Salieri, a man unable to reconcile another’s obvious gifts and unwilling to restrain his own diabolical inclinations, to life.

Grade: B+