I was quite young when I first watched the film adaptation of Amadeus, and I remember finding Mozart's story in it really sad, Mozart seeming to me like a very real person despite his silly laugh (whereas I’d never played anything by Salieri in my piano lessons). To grow up, though, is to realise you are Salieri, and you want to kill Mozart. Amadeus’s quibblings around God and heterosexual sex are all set dressing for what really matters here, which is an absolutely natural envy turning into hatred of anyone with talent or privilege, who can do something you can’t do in a way you wouldn’t do, or, even worse, in a way you wish you could. This is a sensation I associate especially with and feel incessantly when I’m in St Andrews (making this an apt play to put on here) – the list of targets is endless: men in theatre; anyone who finishes writing anything; people with nice shoes who live in well-located houses; people with internships; people who do a great job in theatre shows. Kill them all!
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ID: Dylan Swain and courtiers standing, Aubrey McCance seated looking at the camera.
Credit: Kritvi Gupta. |
Anyway, there’s a lot of talent from an awful lot of people on display in this production, not least the 24-piece orchestra, musical directed by Ben Williams, who play pieces by Mozart as you walk in and at various points throughout the show. There are some really brilliant moments of coordination between the orchestra’s music and the lines of the actors here, but more than that the magic of live music (especially in the space of the McPherson Recital Room) elevates everything; the staggeringly impressive live sung sections, by Eleanor White and Hanna Ward, are some of the highlights of the entire show, and it’s only sad that there aren’t more of them.
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| ID: Dylan Swain reading. Credit: Kritvi Gupta. |
A major theme is artifice. We experience the story through the frame of Dylan Swain as Salieri ‘confessing’ it to us (and he is framed by the Venticelli gossiping), us who he has summoned with the power of music (and theatre). The question is ‘Did he kill Mozart?’ – he says he did in telling us his whole life story, but is it true (of course, historically speaking it isn’t true)? He always makes everything about himself, but even in his own life story do his own actions really matter? Would it all have happened anyway? Dylan makes him very relatable rather than just pathetic, a sensible everyman trying to act as a villain, charmingly self-conscious even when being really evil. He is also greedy and petty, endlessly eating delicious-looking pastries, and always dissatisfied with his own importance and finding ways to ruin his happiness – in one of his (always very powerful) self-destructive breakdowns he splatters a leftover half-eaten pastry onto the ground. He isn't able to achieve what he wants with his life, but through the magic of art, and invoking us (his imaginary audience) he creates a story of himself and a world of people who care about him and his comically overblown Catholic sense of cosmic justice.
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| ID: Aubrey McCance. Credit: Kritvi Gupta. |
Aubrey McCance’s Emperor Joseph II, appearing on the McPherson Recital Room’s balcony dressed up imperially all in white with a white wig and truly extravagant eyeshadow, is the supreme embodiment of camp and artifice in the show (utterly unselfconsciously). He is always absolutely poised, pointing his right leg, waving his hands, laughing artificially and speaking in a voice that I can’t express on paper except to say that every phrase is an extended sigh of pure distilled poshness. This voice and artificiality emanates from him and infects the cast, particularly Dylan in moments he feels powerful.
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ID: Callum Wardman-Browne.
Credit: Kritvi Gupta. |
Callum Wardman-Browne’s Mozart is on the other end of the spectrum of unselfconsciousness, entering meowing like a cat (not a good cat impression but instead just saying ‘meow’ – I bet Salieri would meow with more dedication) and making truly awful poop jokes. Camp becomes associated with tastelessness through the Emperor, but Callum’s childish Mozart is incapable of camp: his horrendous scatological jokes, his pussy-wussy pet name, his genuine but unbearably annoying convulsive laugh, and his asking to be spanked, are all grimly tragicomically heterosexual. His makeup is thinner than anyone else’s: he is genuine, having no understanding of artifice in other people, even in his wife, and so he is doomed. He over-speaks; he knows too many languages (there’s an interesting linguistic multiplicity in the show, usually connected to the theme of hearing without truly appreciating) and talks too enthusiastically in them, always being too open and realising it too late. It’s this feeling of always putting his foot in it that Callum gets across particularly well: rather than an innocently childlike Mozart, he is aware that he keeps doing something wrong and yet can’t stop himself, and helplessly scolds himself over and over again. Even the repellent baby talk becomes moving by the end.
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| ID: Hanna Ward looking left. Credit: Kritvi Gupta. |
The treatment of women in this play, particularly of Constanze (Hanna Ward) is pretty awful. It’s a play all about men, and Hanna exists to give definition to the characters of the men – even her impressive moments of power and insight are all really about them. Still, Hanna makes the most of her character’s usually stereotypical emotions and behaviour, with a sense of humour (and inane laugh) to perfectly match Mozart, and an ability to be absolutely moving in her expressions of sadness and fear and grief.
In my opinion, this show should be doomed unrequited yaoi – Salieri is the only one who truly appreciates Mozart and literally declares he’s fighting God for possession of him (even as the tragically straight Mozart never seriously takes notice of Salieri’s affection) – and I was very disappointed that they didn’t even kiss once, and more disappointed that so much time in the script is spent talking about how all they want is to exploit women for sex. Still, it all adds up to a brilliantly-acted, well-put-together show with an incredible amount of talent and dedication behind it. Maybe the best way to describe it is that it makes you want to kill the Director Aidan Monks.
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