Amadeus

Like so many geniuses, Mozart was unappreciated in his time and misunderstood after his death. In an effort to address the gap between the unknown man and his astounding work, playwright Peter Shaffer wrote Amadeus, which pays homage to the composer's unsurpassed talent through the eyes of a jealous colleague, Antonio Salieri.

Brent Harris as Antonio Salieri Photo: Terry Shapiro

In the Denver Center Theatre Company's current production, Brent Harris handles the varied demands of Salieri's arc—from a successful courtier in his prime to a guilt-ridden, suicidal geriatric—with aplomb, using the Italian's steely resolve as the thread that binds young and old, and leaves us no doubt that director Kent Thompson, like Shaffer and film director Milos Forman before him, finds more truth than fiction in Salieri's claim to have had a hand in Mozart's death.

While both the award-winning play and movie that followed took liberties with the truth, the degree to which the story diverges from real events is still an open and quite interesting question, and both Shaffer's book and Thompson's direction leave plenty of room to speculate.

Was Salieri judged insane simply because he tried to take his own life, or was his attempted suicide the product of a dysfunctional mind or haunted conscience? Was Mozart—or as Salieri called him, "The creature"—a social buffoon and misfit, or was his devil-may-care behavior a private affair exaggerated by the playwright?

Douglas Harmsen as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Photo: Terry Shapiro

Like Tom Hulce in the film version, Douglas Harmsen is a natural at mining the goofy facets of Mozart's persona that are hyperbolized in Shaffer's script—the hyena laugh, the scatological humor, the child-like willingness to trust—thus heightening the contrast between the transcendent music that Mozart seems to compose effortlessly and the socially-aberrant personality traits that accompany it.

It is this disparity—between the soothing melodies and the grating interpersonal exchanges—that drives Salieri to distraction. Before Mozart appears in Vienna, Salieri assumes that G-d is kind, granting him a modicum of talent and the good fortune to get the job of court composer; after Mozart shows up, Salieri turns against G-d for showering genius upon someone he considers uncouth.

Stephanie Cozart as Constanze Weber Photo: Terry Shapiro

Whether or not Salieri actually poisoned Mozart and killed him quickly, or simply denied him the means to make a living and killed him slowly, is beside the point of Shaffer's drama. In either case, the story provides an excellent premise for us to appreciate Mozart's prodigious gifts—brought alive through clavichord simulations and Craig Breitenbach's sound design—and to indulge in the opulence of the Hapsburg court—highlighted by John Iacovelli's ornate, gilded set and David Kay Mickelsen's plush costumes.

The only real flaw in this production is one inherited from Shaffer's script—the over-reliance on Salieri's narration, which tends to stall the action while the self-absorbed composer goes on about his moral conflicts. Harris' nuanced performance squeezes as much from this as possible, but this type of detail works better on the large screen, where the minutiae of torment can be tracked in close-ups. Indeed, it won F. Murray Abraham the Oscar.

Douglas Harmsen as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Stephanie Cozart as Constanze Weber Photo: Terry Shapiro

In addition to Harris' and Harmsen's solid work, Stephanie Cozart, as Constanze Weber, matches Harmsen in playfulness and musters surprising gravity when dealing with the couple's economic issues. Her interaction with Harris, when Constanze tries to sell Mozart's compositions, tips the scales of the drama and sends it tumbling toward its tragic conclusion. David Ivers and Sam Gregory, as Venticelli One and Two, are a crack-up as always, operating as a comedic chorus that fills us in on the juicy gossip.

(L to R) Sam Gregory and David Ivers as the Venticelli Photo: Terry Shapiro

Mozart's demise at the hands of such relatively untalented men, from the tone-deaf Emperor to his pompous bureaucrats, gives us pause to consider how our own self-absorbed governors crush those who challenge their mediocre standards of human behavior.

The Denver Center Theatre Company's production of Amadeus runs through October 28th. 303-893-4100.

Bob Bows