By Peter Shaffer
seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 31 January 2017
Just over 36 years ago, on a cold December morning of 1980, I queued outside the National Theatre in the hope of buying two day release tickets for Peter Hall's original production of Amadeus starring Paul Scofield (Salieri), Simon Callow (Mozart) and Felicity Kendal (Constanze). In those pre-electronic days the limited number of day tickets were only on sale at 9 am from a small booth near the entrance to the building, which was not open to the general public until a later more civilised time of day. Inexplicably, the couple in front of me declined the tickets on offer, and so a friend and I were able to see the play from the centre of the fifth row of the stalls. In this prime position, it seemed as if Salieri was speaking to us alone out of the whole unwieldy amphitheatre of the auditorium as he mused on the appalling mixture of joy, pain, jealousy and betrayal he experienced on first hearing the music of Mozart.
The National has now revived the play in a new production directed by Michael Longhurst with Lucian Msamati as Salieri, Adam Gillen as Mozart and Karla Crome as Constanze, with the participation of the Southbank Sinfonia to provide the musical interludes. Once again, I bought a ticket at the last moment; just by chance there was a return for the evening performance when I asked to the Box Office in the afternoon, this time in the centre of the eleventh row.
