Amadeus At The Majestic Theatre

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a performance of Amadeus at the Majestic Theatre in West Springfield, Massachusetts. It was the first time I'd ever seen it performed on stage, though for years I've owned a published script based on Amadeus' Broadway revival (1999-2000)

The Majestic Theatre production seems to be based more on the original Broadway run in the early 80's. I know because the published script of the Broadway revival has a essay from Peter Shaffer on the various versions of the "Salieri In Mozart's Apartment" sequence. The Majestic Theater's version of the sequence is similar to that of the original Broadway run: Salieri dresses in a grey mask and cape to push Mozart into madness, Mozart indeed seems to lose his marbles when he takes the mask off and sees Salieri and this leads to Mozart, under a table, emitting gibberish about his father while Salieri is at the table shouting "LEAVE ME ALONE!".

Salieri never wears the grey mask and cape in the Broadway revival. Other noticeable differences between Majestic Theater's production and the Broadway Revival script:

1. The Broadway Revival has Salieri singing an incantation to make the audience visible to him, this does not happen in the Majestic Theater production.

2. It's mentioned in the Majestic Theater production that Mozart only pursued Stanzi after her sister jilted him. This is not mentioned in the Broadway Revival.

3. The language is much stronger in the Majestic Theater production than the Broadway Revival. Mozart calls Italians "Wops" 3 times in the Majestic Theater production but never utters this slur in the Broadway Revival. Mozart calls Salieri's comedic opera "dog sh--" in the Majestic Theater production but merely calls it "Unbearable" in the Broadway Revival. Mozart calls Count Orsini Rosenberg "Rosen-Clit" in the Broadway Revival after he tears out the pages from the Marriage Of Figaro score but the Majestic Theater production uses an even worse version of clit. The Majestic Theater production used the movie's famous "sh-- like marble" quote and the Broadway Revival did not.

4. In the Broadway Revival, Stanzi strips until you can see the top of her breasts and just an inch of skin above her stockings in the scene where she visits Salieri's apartment at night. Alas, Stanzi doesn't strip in the Majestic Theater production.

5. For whatever reason, the title of Salieri's comedic opera is called The Chimney Sweep in the Majestic Theater production and The Stolen Bucket in the Broadway Revival.

Some more notes on Majestic Theater's production:

A. All the unspoken parts were removed. If they mentioned an unspoken character like Kappelmeister Bonno or Theresa Salieri, they just had stage hands hold up paintings of the characters. This was a great way of saving space as the theater is rather small.

B. It was unintentionally funny when Salieri mentioned being 31 as the actor was clearly at least in his 50's. But hey, F. Murray Abraham was already 43 when they filmed the movie.

C. In Amadeus, it's established that characters are speaking German when we hear them in English. If English is supposed to represent German, it gets confusing in the Majestic Theater production why Emperor Joseph II speaks with a German accent and Salieri's Little Winds speak with British accents.

D. I was surprised at the running time. I thought the play would be 3 hours like the movie's director's cut. It was 2 hours and 19 minutes: 1 hour and 10 minutes to perform the first act, 1 hour and 9 minutes to perform the final act. Leonard Maltin did say the movie was fatally overlong (and was dead wrong)