Play Review AMADEUS at Theatre Cedar Rapids

 

 

On April 17,1980 I was on a sabbatical in London. I got up at 6:30 AM to get to the Waterloo tube station and the National Theatre of Great Britain. I wanted to arrive by 8:00AM to join the queue for day tickets to see  Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, which had opened to acclaim the year before and was still running with the original cast of Paul Scofield and Simon Callow in the two lead roles of Salieri and Mozart.

Upon arrival there were already 30 ahead of me. By 10:00 AM the line had doubled. I got a ticket and my single seat was dead center in row 3. I could see the hairs in Paul Scofield’s nostrils every time he came downstage. “At the end of the production, Salieri pleads for pity on the mediocre souls of the world. He knelt dead center not ten feet from me. As the music slowly faded out, he directed it with his arms, then with smaller gestures, until his head sank and said “Oh Lord have mercy on we who are not the geniuses of the world.” Blackout.

That account of the first production of Amadeus was adapted from my 1980 journal. I am not going to claim that the Theatre Cedar Rapids production I saw in their small Grandon experimental theatre last Sunday afternoon, was better than the British National Theatre’s lush and award-winning production in the large Olivier Theatre, but their rendition was damn good. The singular advantage was that the tiny space permitted every spectator to focus on the key dramatic conflict. In Amadeus, that is the collision that occurs when a good, but mediocre artist, is faced with the arrival of a genius who would become a giant for the ages.  As another giant once said, “Oh what fools these mortals be.”

Matthew James plays Salieri with fervent excellence in both his aged years and his prime. He moves between the two time periods by the simple addition of a cloak and a hood to cover his wig and silky waistcoat when he is playing the elderly man. Ethan B Glenn’s ebulliently crude and massive Mozart crushes Salieri as if he was driving a steamroller over a creampuff. Age and disease catch up to both men and what remains is the tragedy. God has unexplainably given the talent to the boor and left the journeyman to take his place with the rest of us poor mortals. Kehry Anson Lane also deserves mention for a strong and nuanced portrayal of Joseph II.     

Director Patrick DuLaney moved his actors confidently on the tiny Grandon stage making sure that every audience member had ample full-face views. No one felt ignored. And we could hear the actors clearly in their true voices without amplification.  The scenic design was simple and demonstrated that this was a play about people, not an ode to baroque splendor. The evocative blocked floor was spattered in what appeared to be blood. Scene changes were smoothly performed by the actors by simply moving the few pieces of furniture around into different configurations.   

Although the play was reduced in visual grandeur by being crammed into a 100-seat black box, the superiority of Mozart’s music came through at every turn. This is a show you must make an effort to see. It runs until June 22^nd, but you had better hurry to get tickets. According to the stage manager, the advance was strong.