Word: amadeus
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...case against Peter Shaffer is well established. Shaffer himself has presented it, in such hugely successful plays as Equus (1973), Amadeus (1979) and Lettice and Lovage (1987). He is stagy, melodramatic, given to portentous evocations of myth, an obsessive juggler of the duality between head and heart, reason and inspiration, ordered restraint and exalted excess. Of course the same plays, viewed from another angle, make a strong case in Shaffer's favor. He is intensely theatrical, intellectually provocative, inventive with plot and setting despite the single-mindedness of his themes -- in short, entertaining and fascinating even at his most over...
...ACTOR CAN EXPECT TO CONQUER THE title role in HAMLET -- only to provide fresh insight into a few scenes. Tom Hulce, whose varied work has been overshadowed by his gigglesome Mozart in the film Amadeus, specializes in ironic, self-deprecating intelligence that ought to meet that modest goal. But in a hokey production all too typical of Washington's Shakespeare Theater, Hulce fails to make the words sound sincere and obscures the political and revenge narratives with muddling about real-or-feigned madness. Francesca Buller comes as close as anyone can to bringing off Ophelia's breakdown, and Franchelle Stewart...
...Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
This is all very colorful. And quite beside the point. Mozart has returned. This age is quite consumed with Wolfgang Amadeus' table manners and toilet practices. But the point is the music. Can he still compose? Do the gods still sing...
Both Equus and Amadeus share the same pursuit of the beautiful, the same frustration with constrained quotidian life, the same mournful conviction that "lawyers and legends have little in common." Shaffer's characters ache to live in the world of legend...