Opinion: Robert Faires on Now Now Oh Now, Boom and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Austin Chronicle

Austin Chronicle Arts Editor Robert Faires offers reflections on learning at the theatre in his engaging portmanteau review of the Rude Mechs' Now Now Oh Now, Capital T's Boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, and the Doctuh Mistuh production of the musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson directed by Michael McKelvey and featuring David Gallagher. Here's an excerpt; click the link to read the full text.

David Gallagher

All Over Creation: 

Continuing Education

Turns out theatre is a great place for getting schooled

Robert Faires, Fri., June 15, 2012

The woman said that she was going to speak to us about evolutionary biology.

Now, had this been back in my school days, that declaration would have shot a torrent of Barton Springs-chilled water through my veins. See, at some point in my adolescence, science and math stopped coming easily to me, and the deeper into those subjects I ventured, the more I floundered. In my ears then, "evolutionary biology" would have rung with the sound of being dropped into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico without a flotation device.

But I was not in a classroom, and those days were long behind me. In fact, this was just a few weeks ago, and I was inside the Off Center, seated at a long table along with some two dozen other people, and the woman addressing us was a company member of the Rude Mechanicals, playing a character in the troupe's most recent production, Now Now Oh Now. Now, she did indeed go on to discuss concepts in evolutionary biology, and most of it struck me as beyond your basic Darwin – the primary notion being that nature may select for beauty as well as survival skills – but rather than being at sea, I was thoroughly engaged. I mean, I caught that wave way out in the Gulf and rode it all the way in to the Padre shore. What she talked about was not only clear to me, but it's stayed with me in the days since, and I've been much more attentive to birds, wondering about the extent to which sheer pleasure has shaped the development of their coloration and songs.

Click to read more at the Austin Chronicle on-line . . . .

Upcoming: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a rock musical, Doctuh Mistuh Productions, June 7 - July

Doctuh Mistuh Productions

presents

(image via Michael McKelvey)

 Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (a rock musical)

June 7 - July 1, Thursdays - Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 5 p.m.
special performances on Wed., June 27 at 7:30 pm & Friday, June 29 at 11 pm
at the Blue Theatre, 916 Springdale (click for map)
Tickets $15-22.  $10 Price Student Rush 30 minutes prior to curtain

Tickets available online via








or by calling (800) 838-3006


From the people who brought you Evil Dead, The Musical -- DM Productions is proud to present the Texas premiere of one of the most talked about musicals in years, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. An exhilarating and white-knuckled look at one of our nation's founding rock stars, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson recreates and reinvents the life of "Old Hickory," from his humble beginnings on the Tennessee frontier to his days as our seventh Commander-in-Chief. It also asks the question, is wanting to have a beer with someone reason enough to elect him? What if he's really, really hot? 


The show portrays Andrew Jackson as an Emo Rock Star and scrutinizes the American politic machine with wit and cynicism.   The theatricality of BBAJ ranges from hard-edge Green Day-like concert to PBS historical recreation to vaudevillian buffoonery.  Nothing is sacred, especially not the rise and fall of the man whom many consider America’s most popular president.  “Populish Yea Yea.” 

The cast features David Gallagher, Haley Smith Montgomery, Jose Villareal, Libby Dees Detling, Aaron Alexander, Rebecca Robinson, Scott Swanson, Sarah Marie Curry, Joey Banks, Eve Sampaga, Stephen Jack, Joel Mercado-See, Nathan Jerkins, David Ponton, Alan Marequiota and Trevor Detling.  

The production staff includes Michael McKelvey (stage & musical director), Ben Wolfe (Assistant Director), Glenda Barnes (costume designer), Joe Carpenter (set designer), Rocker Verastique and Danny Herman (Choreographers) and Erin  Fleming (lighting designer).

About Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson:   Book by Alex Timbers; Music & Lyrics by Michael Friedman. Developed by New York-based experimental company Les Freres Corbusier, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson had workshop productions in August 2006 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and in May 2007 at the New 42nd Street Studios, New York. It premiered in January 2008 in Los Angeles at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, produced by Center Theatre Group. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson made its New York premiere in May 2009 at The Public Theater in New York in a concert version, and returned to run from March through June, 2010.  The show premiered on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on October 13, 2010 and ran until January 2, 2011.

The Mousetrap, Austin Playhouse, November 20 - December 20

Theatre journalism has a half-life of perhaps two weeks, a fact that prompts me to strive to see a production as soon as possible. After all, a theatre review published only 48 hours before closing has not much more than archival interest.

One would prefer to deliver the report and comments hot off the first-night griddle, particularly when the show's an interesting or engaging one. Perhaps, just perhaps, the review might contribute to increasing the turnout for deserving productions.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to The Mousetrap until its final weekend, due to family visits, a surging December theatre season, and my own return to the boards in mid-December.

We're subscribers and modest contributors to the Austin Playhouse, in part because it's the first theatre we discovered in Austin after relocating here in 2007. I have an affection and respect for Don Toner and the Playhouse's company of about two dozen actors. Now mid-way through their tenth season behind the Penn Field water tower at 3601 South Congress, they have increased their core season to five plays and they operate an intriguing side space, the Larry L. King Theatre.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, Austin Playhouse, November 20 - December 20

UPDATE: Click for ALT review, December 30

Received directly:

Austin Playhouse presents

The Mousetrap
by Agatha Christie

November 20 – December 20, 2009
Thursday - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 5pm
(No performance on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26)

Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery takes the stage!

Giles and Mollie Ralston have just completed renovating the imposing Monkswell Manor into a charming country inn. The first night the inn is open for business they’re quickly snowed in with four guests and a stranded motorist. A detective arrives on skis to warn the group that he believes a murderer may be on the way, but when one of the guests is found dead, it becomes clear that the murderer may already be at Monkswell Manor. As the detective attempts to discover the truth, everyone becomes a suspect and long-hidden secrets are revealed.

[graphic based on HarperCollins' UK 50th anniversary edition, 1995]

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Evil Dead, Doctuh Mistah Productions at the Salvage Vanguard, October 8 - 31

UPDATE, Thursday night: Additional seats added Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night. Check availability at SVT tickets.

UPDATE: New shows added: Wednesday, October 28 and Saturday afternoon, October 31. All others SOLD OUT (per @JMJTX)




Michael McKelvey and the cast & crew of Evil Dead, The Musical have a hit on their hands, if you take as evidence the turnout on opening night. The scene at the Salvage Vanguard was like trying to load a 747 at a tin-roofed shack in the Caribbean.

Michael was astonished. Once he'd gotten the surging, enthusiastic elbow-to-elbow crowd into their places, he told us that as of that afternoon they'd had only 60 seats confirmed -- 30 reservations and another 30 distributed to the press and to friends of the company.

He told the folks in the "splash zone" of the first three rows that they wouldn't need those black plastic garbage-bag ponchos until the second act.

This was an audience of happy 20-somethings, except for me and for two rather elegantly deliberate older gentlemen wearing cowboy hats. They all appeared to know the story established by the three 1980s horror flicks that I had never seen or had any interest in seeing.

Five young people set out to spend a weekend at a remote cabin in the woods. Two couples: Ash and Cheryl (David Gallagher and Kelly Bales) and Scott and Shelly (Christopher Skillern and Macey Mayfield); and Ash's bratty little sister Cheryl (Corley Pillsbury). No, they don't know the owner. They're just going to break in and have a good time. The guys are hot for the girls and NO ONE IMAGINES THAT ANYTHING BAD COULD HAPPEN (ooh!). But we know that there's an ancient book of the dead involved, because this creepy guy told us so. The vanished owner has left a tape recorder reciting spells to invoke demons and that gullible Ash just insists on listening to THE WHOLE INCANTATION!!

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Arts Reporting: Brian Paul Scipione Interviews Michael McKelvey on Evil Dead, The Musical, INSITE Magazine, October 2009

UPDATE: Review by Clare Croft for Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" art blog, October 11

UPDATE: KOOP-FM's Lisa Scheps interviews Michael McKelvey and plays recorded music from Evil Dead, The Musical on her program "Off Stage and On The Air, October 5. Numbers presented:

Book of the Dead (:37)
Cabin in the Woods (3:17)
I’m Not a Killer (1:37)
It’s Time (2:35)
All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons (3:23)
Groovy (1:01)

From INSITE Magazine Austin, October 2009, now available around town:

Blood, Chainsaws, and Zombies: Not Your Average Musical

By Brian Paul Scipione

THERE WILL BE BLOOD. And it will be zombie blood. Salvage Vanguard Theater and Doctuh Mistuh Productions are teaming up to bring the slash hit, wait that’s, smash hit musical version of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead Trilogy” to Austin this October. Debuting in Toronto in 2003, the show has enjoyed successful runs worldwide in New York City, Seoul,Tokyo, Cleveland, and Louisville. The play combines the plots of all three movies with a few liberties taken here and there to keep it both streamlined for performance and fresh for fanatics.

[ . . . ] McKelvey has chosen David Gallagher for the part [of Ash], whom he calls, “the most versatile actor in Austin.”

One particular stand out from the auditions was Corley Pillsbury, who landed the part of Ash’s girlfriend, Cheryl. “Corley is a dynamo. We did a lot of improv work during auditions,” McKelvey explains, “and she just tore it up. I never saw someone go so over the top in an audition.” Her efforts became all the more impressive in retrospect when he learned that she was actually sick during auditions.

And if zealous acting and top notch musical direction is not enough to draw in the crowds, this show also has a live three piece band, late night parties with food and drink, and an beguilingly appropriate closing date of Halloween complete with yet another party. But most of all it has blood. As soon as the play was announced the first question on everyone’s lips was “will there be a splash zone.” And there will be. Right in front of the stage, a special cordoned area for those who want to take their interactive theater home with them… on their faces.

- -

Evil Dead: The Musical runs October 9-31 at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd. with performances at 7:30pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and 5pm on Sundays.

Tickets: Thursday and Sunday: $18 general/$12 students and seniors; Friday and Saturday: $22 general/$15 students and seniors. Opening and Closing Night: $25 general/ $20 student and seniors. See www.salvagevanguard.org for additional information and online ticket sales.

Click for full text of interview by Brian Paul Scipione as published in INSITE magazine (1.8 MB - please be patient!)

Click to download .pdf file of entire October issue of INSITE magazine (5 MB)

Read more on Evil Dead, The Musical at AustinLiveTheatre.com, with link to KUT audio feature by Mike Lee

Upcoming: Evil Dead, the Musical, Doctuh Mistah Prodctions at Salvage Vanguard, October

UPDATE, Thursday night, 10/29: Additional seats added Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night. Check availability at SVT tickets.

UPDATE: Review by Clare Croft for Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" art blog, October 11

UPDATE: KOOP-FM's Lisa Scheps interviews Michael McKelvey and plays recorded music from Evil Dead, The Musical on her program "Off Stage and On The Air, October 5. Numbers presented:

Book of the Dead (:37)
Cabin in the Woods (3:17)
I’m Not a Killer (1:37)
It’s Time (2:35)
All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons (3:23)
Groovy (1:01)

Update: Mike Lee's feature on Evil Dead, The Musical at KUT-FM (2 min.)

Received directly:

Evil Dead, The Musical
October 9 - 31

Evil Dead makes its Central Texas premiere this October at Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin.

About the Show: With the approval of film director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell, a musical version of the film Evil Dead was staged. The musical takes creative liberty with the plot line of the cult film trilogy, mixing together the characters and concepts of all three.

The original production enjoyed a successful run in Toronto and Montreal. The show went on to gain favorable responses from both critics and audiences during its 2006-2007 off-Broadway run. The musical has gone on to subsequent performances in Louisville, KY, Seoul, Korea, and Tokyo, Japan.

October 9-31. Performances will be at 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and 5 p.m. on Sundays.
Salvage Vanguard Theatre, 2803 Manor Rd., Austin, TX 78722

Tickets: Thursday and Sunday: $18 General/$12 students and seniors; Friday and Saturday: $22 General/$15 students and seniors. Opening and Closing Night: $25 General/$20 student and seniors. See www.salvagevanguard.org for additional information and online ticket sales.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill, Ar Rude at the Off Center, May 27 - June 7

Eugene O'Neill did not want you to see this astonishing, bleak and deeply moving drama. When he died in a Boston hotel room in 1953, he had left it locked up in the vaults of his publisher Random House with instructions that it was not to be opened for 25 years after his death, and that it was never to be performed.

Instead, his third wife Carlotta Monterrey, who had fought with him and protected him and nursed him since 1928, inherited the rights. She deeded it to Yale University with the stipulation that proceeds be used to build a drama library and to award scholarships for drama.

Long Day's Journey Into Night was first produced at the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre in February, 1956. The venue was apt. O'Neill's realistic, sometimes naturalistic drama shared much with the theatrical traditions of Strindberg and Ibsen. In 1936 the Nobel Committee had awarded O'Neill the Nobel Prize for literature, the only Nobel given to an American dramatist. The Broadway premiere at the Helen Hayes Theatre in November, 1956, received Tony awards for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play, as well as the New York Drama Critics' Circle awards for Best Play.

O'Neill wrote 19 one-act plays between 1914 and 1919, drawing extensively on his experiences as a seafarer, and over his career, a total of 32 full-length plays. His work was instrumental in converting the carefree, largely brainless American stage into a medium for serious literature. These were powerful stories, usually on dark subjects. Many drew on Greek mythology. Only one, Ah, Wilderness!, was a comedy, a fantasy version of the years of his youth in New London, Connecticut, as the bookish son of a successful actor.

Long Day's Journey into Night takes exactly that setting. The characters are his parents, his brother, himself and an indolent maid. Their last name is changed to Tyrone, but not to protect any innocents. The action of this one long day in the summer of 1911 includes the moment of confirmation that the younger brother Edmund, the surrogate for O'Neill, has tuberculosis ("consumption") and shows us his mother Mary, lonely and desperate as she gives in to her addiction to morphine.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Long Day's Journey Into Night, Ar Rud at the Off Center, May 28 - June 7

UPDATE: Click for ALT review of May 31




Received by e-mail:




Eugene O'Neil's
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Directed by Dr. Lucien Douglas
May 28 - June 7

Tickets: FREE.....(donations Greatly Appreciated)

“A play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood,” Long Day’s Journey into Night is the masterpiece of Nobel laureate Eugene O’Neill, the playwright who revolutionized American theater in the first half of the 20th century.

Love and jealousy, recrimination and forgiveness, the agony of the artist in capitalist America—illuminated in the Tyrone family as they come to terms with a son’s debilitating illness and a mother’s tragic addiction.

The Ar Rud production of Long Day’s Journey into Night is a labor of love offered to the Austin community in honor of Eugene O’Neill and in celebration of theater’s healing power.

Thursday - Saturday 7:30 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Opening: Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 7:30pm
Final performance: Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 3:00pm
The Off Center, 2211 Hildalgo St., Austin, TX

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Time Steps, Austin Scriptworks at the Blue Theatre, March 26 - April 4

The gathering for Time Steps at the Blue Theatre last Thursday felt like skit night at the close of summer camp. Friendly excitement, lots of young adults, and a program based on games, brainstorming and collaborative action, intended to amuse and astound us over the course of a short evening. The Blue Theatre itself, tucked away behind the Goodwill warehouses in East Austin, is a found venue of sorts, redolent of much earnest make believe.

Austin Scriptworks stirred the pot and furnished the ingredients. At its annual Weekend Fling earlier this season, participating writers were given two days and three "ingredients" with which to build a ten-minute play:

- - The play must move backward, from end to beginning;
- - The play must include a dance break which causes a shift in the action;
and
- - The play must include three things your mother told you not to do.

The harvest was eight winning scripts, presented by Austin directors and actors in six performances. By my subjective taxonomy, these included two relationship dramas, two stories of misfortunes or crimes, one fantasy drama, and three nutsy pieces. Dialogue was strong in all of them. Available actors were parceled out so that almost every face showed up in two roles during the event.

Read More at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

The Last Five Years, Penfold Theatre Company at the Larry L. King Theatre, December 31 - January 25

Intimate but lonely, a haunted portrait of a relationship with the musical flair and lash of cabaret – The Last Five Years, produced by Penfold Theatre and now playing at the Larry L. King Theatre of Austin Playhouse, is a memorable evening spent with two talented characters in the most promising years of their lives.

No one wants to watch the failure of a marriage, to hover as witnesses as hope, delight and enthusiasm go sullen and die. That is the plot of this piece, but writer/composer Jason Robert Brown presents it to us in vignettes of striking musical inventiveness and a clever chronological twist that gives us bittersweet irony throughout.

The scenes with Cathy, the talented aspiring singer and actress, play in reverse. In the opening number, we see her as she discovers a note from Jamie on the kitchen table – and we hear both desolation and resignation in her beautifully sung, moody lament. We learn that they have been together for five years.

The lights then go down and we encounter that same Jamie, five years earlier, as he waits outside her house and bounces into the exultant number about the “Shiksa Goddess.” He glories in the fact that he has finally escaped from all those dutiful Jewish girls in town and is about to embrace the possibility of getting together with a girl who is completely different. “If you had a tattoo, that wouldn’t matter. . . .if you drank blood, well, nobody’s perfect!”

The second-night audience, largely of university age, ate it up, hooted and hollered. Jamie came across as excited, callow and opportunistic – and a lot of fun.

As this very handsome pair of actors work the story from both ends, we begin to realize that Brown and director Michael McKelvey are carefully dosing our emotions. Everyone loves someone who is in love.

In succeeding scenes, Annika Johansson as Cathy gradually lightens up; we learn that in pursuit of a stage career she spent a summer doing musical theatre in the wilds of Ohio (“rooming with a stripper. . . and her snake named Wayne!” ). In chronological forward gear, Jamie gets an unexpected break for his manuscript, an agent, a book contract, and a rave review in the New Yorker from John Updike. He courts Cathy and wins her, and they move in together, sharing an apartment on 73rd street, west of Central Park.



One of the scenes of greatest heartbreak is a Christmas/Hanukah celebration, in which Jamie insists on reading (singing) to her a long short story about Schmul the tailor, while Cathy sits, unimpressed and unconnected, concentrating on crackers and dip. While in Cathy’s reverse narration, she enacts a series of hopeful auditions for singing parts, then relates Jamie’s successes and sings, wistfully, “I’m a part of that. . . “

The two narratives meet at mid-point of this ninety-minute show, when for the first time we find the two together, brimming with hope as they get married.

As the action progresses, the writer/composer and the director adroitly switch our sympathies. Cathy becomes increasingly positive as she nears the start of the relationship; Jamie tries to deal with the devastating effects on Cathy of his literary success, and in so doing both matures and has to deal with her envy and unhappiness.

As an audience we are left unable to choose – there is no villain in this piece, but simply two individuals full of ambitions that do not leave room for a life as a couple.

Maintaining the bitter in relation with the sweet, Brown and Mckelvey give us a delicious confection, resembling perhaps a high quality Swiss chocolate with 80% cacao – dark and full of flavor but always with just enough sugar to lure us onward.

Annika Johansson is a high-cheeked Texas-Scandinavian beauty from Abilene Christian University, with an impressive set of credits since graduating with a BFA in Theatre in 2006. She sings beautifully, with nuance, self-aware irony and humor. Her final scenes, illuminated with Cathy’s hopefulness, are deeply moving.

David Gallagher as Jamie handles deftly the challenge of moving from a strutting post-adolescent to a brooding, conflicted and self-aware adult; he sings and acts with assurance that fully matches that of Johansson.

Brown’s music, scored for the deft fingers of Steve Saugey on keyboard and Amy Harris on violin, is contemporary, spare, and lively; you can hear the cast and musicians do some of the key numbers of The Last Five Years on their 25-minute piece on Aielli Unleashed with KUT’s John Aielli.

The Larry L. King Theatre, a small theatre set up as a tiny apartment in the City, is the perfect venue for this piece.

This is a piece with feeling, sophistication, and great entertainment value. Highly recommended.

12 images by Kimberly Mead from The Last Five Years, Penfold Theatre Company

Review by Robert Faires, published in Austin Chronicle of January 9: "You leave the theatre, an ache of a melody threaded through your chest, tribute to director and music director Michael McKelvey, who has crafted a tender, wistful anatomy of a relationship."

Review by Joey Seiler in Statesman's Austin 360 arts blog: "Forgive me for gushing, but this is the sort of production that audiences are lucky to see: unique, intimate, beautiful, painful and wonderful."

Comments by Michael Barnes of the Statesman in his "Out and About" blog": "I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something about the staggering performances. . . .David Gallagher. . .skips between twitchy elation and scabrous anger so expertly it makes one shudder with recognition. . . . . Annika Johansson. . . so completely embodies the more difficult “backwards” view of the story, her performance arrives on our collective doorstep ike an unforeseen miracle."

Hannah Kenah's interview of director Michael McKelvey, Austin Chronicle of December 26

Amadeus, Austin Playhouse, September 12 - October 19

Rick Roemer owns the stage in the Austin Playhouse presentation of Amadeus. In his portrayal of composer Antonio Salieri, both as a 73-year-old invalid and as a 40-ish striving court composer, he is onstage during at least 80 percent of the action.

Roemer shows extraordinary attention, precision and energy throughout his nearly three hours on stage. He communicates a depth of feeling that is at times hair-raising. He is deeply convincing when the playwright puts into his mouth words seeking to describe the revelation of Mozart’s music – but he surpasses even that level with silent transports of revelation while reading Mozart’s scores, which we, the audience, are privileged to hear at the same time.

I saw this play at a matinee in its third year on Broadway, 1983, slipping into a matinee on a half-price ticket, one Wednesday when Ian McKellen was unexpectedly replaced by his understudy. Some of the playgoers, indignant, turned in their tickets for later dates. For me, just getting into a Broadway theatre was enough.

And how that play has changed for me in that 25-year interval!

The lasting memory I carried into Austin Playhouse on its second night of a five-week run was that of the vulgar, giggling, Mozart, a limber youth happily obsessed with sex and scatology. A shocking but attractive conceit – that God might choose to pour divine music out of irresponsible, impulsive youth.

This time, at an age approximately the average of those portrayed for Salieri by Roemer, I came away with a completely different understanding.

To start with, I now understand the title. “Amadeus” was indeed, the middle name penned by Mozart on his scores. An invention of his own, as it happens, latinizing his given middle name of “Theophilus” – both versions meaning “the love of God.”

That title suggests that the play is about Mozart, which in part it is, but Schaffer signals as well his principal concern, man’s relationship with God.

At the play’s opening, the aged, ill Salieri addresses us from his wheelchair, evoking us as “persons of the future” to hear his version of his struggle with music, Mozart and God, roughly in that order.


Over the accelerated course of a single night we see him transform into his younger self and participate once again in the events of the ten-year period between the arrival of Mozart at the imperial court in Vienna and Mozart’s death, with the Requiem still unfinished.

If this imagined Salieri had had more talent and a more alert human adversary, he would have been an Iago. His resentment against Mozart, that upstart, irreverent idiot savant, drives him systematically to block Mozart’s advancement and to push him into disastrous undertakings, including an early marriage and the exploitation of secret Masonic rituals for The Magic Flute.

By his own admission, Salieri is just an earnest craftsman in his music (in an early comic moment Mozart artlessly demolishes a Salieri march with corrections and improvisations). Before fleeing his impoverished native village in Italy, the young Salieri had stood before an altar in church and made a pact with God – to glorify Him, in exchange for reputation and success in his music.

Mozart never distrusts Salieri. That he dies penniless and abandoned is historical fact, and in this play is presented as the inevitable outcome of Salieri’s machinations, his “attempt to destroy God by destroying his instrument.”

David Gallagher as Mozart portrays a very different, difficult evolution. Capering, giggling, and unthinkingly vulgar in the early scenes, Gallagher gives us the accumulating effects of shocks, disasters and deteriorating health on Mozart without losing his fundamental innocence. The child is always there, inside the failing flesh.

The play belongs to these two, although the action is forwarded with an ensemble of supporting actors. Of that group, the most vivid are Brian Coughlin as the matter-of-fact Emperor Joseph II and the two Venticelli (“little winds”) manservants of Salieri (Huck Huckaby and Christopher Loveless).

The play demands concentration. The plot feeds us with the evil delights of Salieri’s successful campaign to diminish Mozart, who was never perceived by contemporaries as a rival to Salieri. But Schaffer places his greatest emphasis on the dilemma of Salieri as an icon of earnest mediocrity.

And this time, 25 years on, Salieri’s self-love, humanity and desperate turns to vice have far more resonance for me.

We may renounce sin such as his and recoil from destruction of the sublime. But as we see retribution arrive for Salieri, we can feel the pity and fear that Aristotle defined as the essential qualities of tragedy.

Review of opening night by Barry Pineo, Austin Chronicle of September 18

Click for Ian McKellen's notes and photos from the 1980-1983 Amadeus

Review posted by JustFo in the Austinist, September 18