{"id":2287303,"date":"2026-02-18T12:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2287303"},"modified":"2026-02-18T12:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T12:14:15","slug":"amadeus-review-jefferson-mays-performance-ignites-new-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/amadeus-review-jefferson-mays-performance-ignites-new-revival\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Amadeus’ review: Jefferson Mays\u2019 performance ignites new revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cAmadeus,\u201d Peter Shaffer\u2019s 1979 runaway hit drama, has one foot in the Vienna of Mozart and another foot in whatever period the production is taking place in. The play, a sumptuous historical pastiche, is both an invitation and a daunting challenge to theater makers.<\/p>\n

Darko Tresnjak, the Tony winning-director (\u201cA Gentleman\u2019s Guide to Love and Murder\u201d<\/a>) with a glittering opera resume (including \u201cThe Ghosts of Versailles\u201d at LA Opera), is unusually well-equipped to take on the assignment. And Jefferson Mays, the Tony-winning actor (\u201cI Am My Own Wife\u201d) and a prized collaborator of Tresnjak\u2019s, was born to take on the role of Antonio Salieri, the music bureaucrat whose overweening ambition to join the pantheon of great composers leads to some diabolical machinations. <\/p>\n

No surprise, then, that the revival of \u201cAmadeus\u201d that opened Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse is a marvel to behold. Contained within Alexander Dodge\u2019s lush red set, Tresnjak\u2019s production moves between the rococo grandeur of Emperor Joseph II\u2019s court and a kind of interior hellscape, where Salieri, the play\u2019s guide and scheming rival of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, can recall the mischief he wrought against the young upstart perversely blessed with a divine spark of genius. <\/p>\n

\u201cAmadeus\u201d offers a twist on the Faust legend. As a young man, Salieri prayed to an image of God in his Northern Italian town, pledging that, if he were to become a composer of sufficient fame, he would repay this gift not only through his music but through living a life of virtue. This wish is granted, but Salieri reneges on his end of the deal after losing faith in the Almighty. <\/p>\n

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<\/picture>\n
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AMADEUS at Pasadena Playhouse – Ensemble<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Worldly success, he comes to see, is no sign of genuine distinction. As court composer and music gatekeeper, Salieri has power and position. But he knows that he\u2019ll never have that natural brilliance that radiates from Mozart\u2019s compositions like a heavenly light. He is a mediocrity while the jejune young man running riot in the palace is a miraculous, world-changing prodigy. <\/p>\n

Shaffer, whose plays include \u201cEquus,\u201d \u201cThe Royal Hunt of the Sun\u201d and \u201cBlack Comedy,\u201d is drawn to existential reckonings, and in \u201cAmadeus\u201d he\u2019s written his cris de coeur on the immorality of the universe. The hard fact is that genius isn\u2019t reserved for the worthy any more than misfortune is reserved for the wicked. <\/p>\n

After ruining Mozart\u2019s prospects at court, Salieri is stunned to learn that he\u2019s been promoted to kapellmeister. He can\u2019t shake his Catholic upbringing, but what\u2019s the point of being a martyr when Machiavels are rewarded? <\/p>\n

For all the play\u2019s prolific acclaim, \u201cAmadeus\u201d has had a conspicuous second act problem. Shaffer kept revising the play, even after the avalanche of accolades for the London and New York premieres. Milo\u0161 Forman\u2019s 1984 film version was lavished with Oscars, further cementing the work\u2019s place in public consciousness. But like Salieri, Shaffer was all too aware that popularity isn\u2019t the same thing as greatness.<\/p>\n

He kept reworking the confrontation scene between Salieri and Mozart, the play\u2019s climactic moment in which irony once again gets the better of tragic recognition. As an impoverished and ailing Mozart struggles to complete his \u201cRequiem\u201d before his death at the age of 35, Salieri is torn between his fidelity to music and his loyalty to his own career. He is one of the few people of his age equipped to recognize the scale of Mozart\u2019s achievement, but the fragility of his ego and his obsession with music immortality stand in his way. <\/p>\n

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\"AMADEUS <\/picture>\n
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AMADEUS at Pasadena Playhouse – Sam Clemmett and Lauren Worsham<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

In the preface to the updated Samuel French edition of the play, Peter Hall, who directed the work\u2019s original London and New York productions, recalls his 1998-99 revival and the important role Los Angeles played in the script\u2019s evolution. \u201cWe opened at the Old Vic in London in 1998,\u201d he writes. \u201cWe then came to the Ahmanson Theatre in October 1999 to begin our pre-Broadway tour. There should be a plaque on the wall of that theatre \u2014 \u2018Amadeus was finished here October 1999 after twenty years of work \u2019 \u2014 because the text-work continued there and was (I think) finally concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The general thrust of the changes were to de-melodramatize Salieri\u2019s action and to focus more attention on his guilt and metaphysical torment. Shaffer succeeds in this regard, but the wordy play grows cumbersome in its final explanatory stages. And Salieri seems more of hybrid creature, as though a villain out of Christopher Marlowe had suddenly been endowed with Shakespearean self-awareness. <\/p>\n

Mays\u2019 portrayal \u2014 I can\u2019t imagine anyone topping his interpretation of the character \u2014 is fiendishly complex. There\u2019s not a layer that has gone unexcavated in a performance of extraordinary verbal facility and color. \u201cAmadeus\u201d relies heavy on monologues, and Mays is not only a crack ensemble player but also a master soloist. (His tour de force in \u201cA Christmas Carol,\u201d <\/a>where he played dozens of characters, matched his virtuosity in Doug Wright\u2019s \u201cI Am My Own Wife.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The play begins at Salieri\u2019s end, the scene of a dying man fanning suspicions over his role in Mozart\u2019s death. Mays\u2019 Salieri \u2014 bald, munching Italian cookies and foaming at the mouth when in the grip of seething resentment \u2014 has a story to tell, a detective tale in which the crime being investigated may not be the murder he\u2019s touting but a spiritual offense that is even more agonizing to confess. An inveterate self-promoter, Salieri is determined to control how he\u2019ll be remembered. And if he can\u2019t beat Mozart at music, then he\u2019ll happily accept a place in history as his assassin. <\/p>\n

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\"AMADEUS <\/picture>\n
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AMADEUS at Pasadena Playhouse – Jefferson Mays<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The play rewinds to the moment when Mozart (Sam Clemmett) enters the scene, whooping like a court jester and making scatological remarks like the \u201cobscene child\u201d that Salieri (now wearing a wig) compares him to. While the weary court composer is buried in the bureaucracy of state music, teaching scores of pupils, serving on endless committees and composing anthems and choral pieces, Mozart is dashing off works of startling originality while acting like a complete goofball.<\/p>\n

Mays and Clemmett are well matched as antagonists, balancing the flamboyant flaws and stubborn humanity of their characters. Clemmett\u2019s Mozart is a baby-faced libertine, an overgrown boy trying to climb up skirts. Mays\u2019 Salieri is at once aghast at such loutish behavior and bitterly envious that Mozart is exceptional enough to get away with it. <\/p>\n

Mozart, however, isn\u2019t merely a puerile rascal, as his relationship with Lauren Worsham\u2019s Constanze reveals. As their romance turns to marriage, reality sets in for them both. Their poverty, the fruit of Salieri\u2019s malicious ploys, tests the limits of their endurance. Mozart\u2019s genius isn\u2019t so much unrecognized as unremunerated. When Constanze reaches her breaking point, Mozart\u2019s imbecility is exposed as fragility. He\u2019s lost without her nurturing sensuality. <\/p>\n

Tresnjak treats the play as though it were a tragedy wearing the mask of comedy. He doesn\u2019t resist the melodrama that\u2019s inherent in the material, but he refuses to overindulge it. This production hasn\u2019t convinced me that \u201cAmadeus\u201d is a world classic. (The story slogs at points and the second act is overwritten.) But I doubt I\u2019ll have the opportunity to see a better revival in my lifetime.<\/p>\n

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\"AMADEUS <\/picture>\n
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AMADEUS at Pasadena Playhouse – Sam Clemmett and Jefferson Mays<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The ensemble\u2019s playful insouciance maintains the production\u2019s buoyancy. Matthew Patrick Davis accentuates with a wink the callowness of Joseph II, an emperor who perhaps sees in Mozart a reflection of his own stunted nature. John Lavelle exudes a perfumed whiff of modern camp in his portrayal of Orsini-Rosenberg, the fussy, backstabbing director of the Imperial Opera.<\/p>\n

The Venticelli, the chorus-like \u201cpurveyors of fact, rumor and gossip throughout the play,\u201d according to Shaffer, are played by Jennifer Chang and Hilary Ward with timeless vibrancy. Sopranos Michelle Allie Drever and Alaysha Fox give us a sample of Mozart\u2019s operatic preeminence. (The highlight is \u201cSoave sia il vento,\u201d a gorgeous trio from \u201cCos\u00ec fan tutte\u201d that\u2019s performed here with Jared Andrew Bybee.)<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s on a visual level that the production is at its most entrancing. Linda Cho\u2019s costumes, built from scratch by L.A. Opera\u2019s costume shop, summon the spectacular opulence of this music-obsessed Viennese world. Will Vicari\u2019s wig and makeup design complete the extravagantly artificial fashion of the period. Pablo Santiago\u2019s lighting and Aaron Rhyne\u2019s projections lend the production a dreamlike fluidity, ideal for a play that emanates as much from Salieri\u2019s memory as from his unconscious.<\/p>\n

All would be lost, however, without Mays\u2019 quicksilver brilliance \u2014 the way he can shift from savage irony to vindictive rage to godless despair in the space of a line. Salieri may be a mediocrity, destined to be a footnote in the short yet indelible life of Mozart. But in the coterie world of theater connoisseurs, Mays has earned a place among acting immortals.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u2018Amadeus\u2019<\/p>\n

Where:<\/b> Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena<\/p>\n

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays. 7 p.m. Thursdays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 15<\/p>\n

Tickets:<\/b> Start at $53<\/p>\n

Contact:<\/b> (626) 356-7529 or pasadenaplayhouse.org<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n

Running time:<\/b> 2 hours, 40 minutes (including one 15-minute intermission)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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