Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus is in summary about the ‘feckless’ artistic genius of Mozart pitted against the mediocrity of Antonio Salieri whose jealousy over Mozart’s success in the play lends itself to murder.
The play was an in depth exploration of Mozart as a man and not just as a genius composer; the director Kent Thompson brought Mozart’s humanity to the stage as well as accurately portraying the script composed by Shaffer. The elements of fear in failure and ebullience in joy were the true rivals in the play, and the way in which the audience relates to these characters was extraordinary.The magic, as it were, of the play was the way in which both Shaffer’s ideas and Kent’s ideas bred a new life into the classical artist Mozart; he was not only a composer by the end of the play but the audience was so engrossed in his life that he became a person to them, relatable with his life, his marriage, his children and his music.The play by Shaffer introduced to audiences a psychological background that was highlighted in Kent’s portrayal by lighting and theme background. The stages were generally a dark atmosphere which juxtaposed Mozart’s own emotional allegiance to failure, but also the lights were introduced in brilliant colors when Mozart’s psyche was enjoying a brief happiness.
Kent made the lighting a major part of Shaffer’s script. Kent did a lot of spotlighting, or mood lighting in which only a few characters on stage were illuminated to show their importance. The corners and niches of darkness were the psychological equivalent to the turmoil that Mozart was going through not only in his composition powers, but also in his relationship with his mother, his wife, his rival, himself.Therefore, it was not just the use of lighting but the introduction of shadow that enabled Kent to deftly portray Mozart’s emotional being.
Also, Kent incorporated into the design of the show six luxury pendant lamps above the audience members. This allowed the action and the scenery of the stage to overlap the audience so that the actions on stage would be more realistic since the audience was almost part of the play with the same scenery above their head.When the pendant lamps turned on during a palace scene or a scene calling for luxury the audience members were being incorporated into the play by the extension of the stage design into the seats.This is not the only technique Kent used in allowing the audience to become part of the actions on the stage.
The way that Shaffer wrote the script, in plot, Salieri is in a wheelchair, and the action is taking place 32 years after Mozart’s, ‘assassination’.Salieri lets out a very penitent dialogue in which he asks the audience to be his confessors. In this action, both Kent and Shaffer are introducing that the suspension of disbelief does not exist at the proscenium, but at the entrance to the audience since the audience itself is asked to become characters, or confessors in the play.Salieri goes on to become a tour guide for the audience during events that happened 32 years ago.
He tells the audience in Act 1 Scene 2, as a younger man and not in a wheelchair that ‘we’ are now in Vienna in 1781.He continues to introduce other characters for the audience. Salieri in fact continues his guiding throughout most of the play ensuring that the audience knows where the scene is taking place and what the actions are in on stage. In this manner Shaffer in the play has the insurance that the audience will not be misinformed about who is who and what they are seeing. With Salieri as the guide, the audience becomes not just an indolent participant of the events on stage but a witness to them, confessors who must deliberate at the end of the play justice upon Salieri after they are revealed the truth.However, since Salieri, in Shaffer’s adaptation of Mozart’s life, is an assassin and the beginning of the play states as much, the audience will be guarded against his person and his motives and side with the feckless, though charming Mozart; thereby cinching the audience’s indulgence and apt attention to the actions.
