Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” is, at heart, a great love triangle. At one vortex, there’s 18th century composer Antonio Salieri, wavering between piety and murderous peevishness. At another corner, there’s the God whose favor Salieri craves, quite unrequitedly. And then, standing between them, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, God’s true love, or at least it seems to Salieri for a while. It’s a pleasure to report that all three of these roles are exceptionally well-played in a splendid new production at the Pasadena Playhouse, here to remind us that genius and the lack of it can both be hell.
God does not have a speaking role in “Amadeus,” being an absentee kind of guy, but he does occasionally loom over the proceedings, projected onto the stage house’s back wall as a spooky, painted projection seen just long enough to be established as the apparently disinterested foil for Salieri’s entitled prayers. As far as the actual casting goes, anyone who’s seen the 1979 Broadway play (oft-revised by Shaffer) or the hit 1984 movie comes in knowing this is really going to be a two-hander… bordering at times on a one-hander. As Mozart, Sam Clemmett is wonderful, carefully navigating the silliness and sullenness of a character who’s been drawn as part boy, part man. But it’s no slight to what Clemmett is doing to be reminded that the title of “Amadeus’” is an act of misdirection, and that Salieri sucks up all the main character energy in the drawing room. This ingratiating villain spends so much of the final monolog going on about being the “patron saint of mediocrity,” he’s pretty much daring any actor who plays him to show up with anything short of greatness.
