South Africa: Amadeus - Rivalry Revisited As the Paradoxical Personality of Mozart Strikes a Major Key

analysis

Prodigy, musical genius, man-child, egomaniac, wise-ass. Mozart, the late-18th-century Austrian composer whose life was snuffed out in poverty at the age of 35, was also an enigma.

And, if Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's 1979 play about Mozart's rivalry with court composer Antonio Salieri, is anything to go by, it's quite likely he suffered from some form of ADHD and that he was probably somewhere on what we today rather flippantly refer to as "the spectrum".

In Shaffer's absorbing imagining of what might have transpired between the two rival composers, Mozart simply can't quite get a handle on how to control himself in public nor when to hold his tongue. He lurches between moods, turns on a dime between bouts of affection and outbursts of fiery rage, utters sublime philosophical discourses on the nature of art and moments later emits adolescent fart sounds from his lips.

Embodied in a new South African production by the rather excellent -- young, vivacious and perfectly suited-to-the-role -- actor Aidan Scott, he is also on another sort of spectrum, wavering in turns between sexy, self-assured rockstar and precocious brat. He's light and dark, troubled and liberated, short-tempered and quick-to-forgive, sharp-as-nails and yet compulsively naïve.

Scott shows us the rascally seducer of women, the lovestruck playboy capable of scandal and indecency, but just as easily reveals the soft underbelly of a troubled soul.

Mozart...

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