Review: Amadeus

MEDIOCRITY AND THE MASTER

“Keep Your friends close, but Your enemies even closer”. In this saying, the plot balances in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, which is now being shown at Lilla Teatern.

In the library there is a red velvet armchair. In it, Antonio Salieri has sat down to devote himself to his only vice, gluttony in biscuits, macaroons, sweets and marzipan. Otherwise, he is a virtuous man. The disheveled, hysterically laughing Constanze storms into the room, closely followed by a hyperactive Mozart in a neat, red outfit. The couple does not see Salieri in the armchair and he involuntarily and embarrassingly follows the vulgar, at the same time childish erotic game that takes place on the library floor. Mozart is an adult child who has never left the anal stage. For Salieri, who even before the meeting felt threatened by the new messiah of the concert halls, this will be the straw that almost breaks the camel’s back. “God, why do you give your voice to him, but not to me?”

This is Mozart’s and Salieri’s first meeting, and gradually a long, rather complicated story of a mediocrity and a prodigy, and of envy, is unfolded.
Although the story takes place in Vienna at the end of the 1700s, it can easily be linked to today’s competitive career society. Both Salieri and Mozart want to be the best, but one has to fight hard and sacrifice a lot to reach even half as far as the other. The other doesn’t have to struggle at all, the music comes naturally to him.

Salieri’s delicate problem lies in the fact that he honestly adores Mozart’s musical genius (he is also the only one who fully understands music), but at the same time wants to do everything to counteract his success. Through his social position, he also succeeds in his insidious intent, but quickly realizes that the power he has can neither make Mozart a worse composer nor himself a better composer. Of the two, it is not Salieri who will be remembered by future generations.

Pekka Strangs Salieri carries the entire story from beginning to end with a haughty, rigid body language. It is a sharp contrast to Sampo Sarkola’s virile and cream-pastry-happy Mozart, which is almost clown-influenced and rather one-dimensional in a positive sense. Strang has a more difficult mission in portraying the false, but at the same time human Salieri, who towards the end is completely broken down by his remorse. It is not only in the rivals’ music that old is pitted against new, boring against fresh, and permissible against forbidden. Their entire relationship offers the same contradictions.

Among the rest of the ensemble, Nina Kaipainen, as Constanze, is really skilled. The dimensions emerge above all at the end when she mourns her late Amadeus. From having been a giggly and light-footed girl, she becomes a worn-out and despairing mother and widow.

Dramaturgically, Peter Shaffer’s play directed by Erik Söderblom makes a long journey. The first act is almost consistently a comedy on the verge of being busy, while the second act slowly develops from comedy to tragedy. The play is still a bit too long, and the pace a bit hectic. It feels as if they have tried to include everything that can be done within the framework of three hours, and the audience’s time for reflection is short. The whole is a bit too fragmentary, and the music also suffers from this. Despite the fact that, according to the marketing, the music is supposed to play a leading role in the play, it feels like you never really have time to enjoy it once it has started. A clever move, however, is the living pianist (Emil Holmström/Joonas Ahonen) who, at the contemporary fortepiano in the corner of the stage, gets to show what he is made of.

A tip of the hat also gets Eradj Nazimov’s soundscape. Creating a soundscape that doesn’t make a fuss unnecessarily, but really makes an impression when it’s supposed to, is a difficult task that he succeeds in in Amadeus.