A funny thing happened on the way to Vienna...

Remember back when I talked about how I was going to blog a bunch about the process of doing Amadeus? Well, a funny thing interfered with that plan: the process of doing Amadeus.

Sorry, folks. I simply have never had my ass so thoroughy kicked by a role. That's as it should be, and I still feel as if I'm only just getting my fingers wrapped around the complexity and specificity of the show. But I have spent almost every spare moment of the past four weeks working on physical scoring and, frankly, my voluminous lines. Seriously, on my lunch break, in the car, in the shower, in bed before falling asleep...

So no, I haven't had time to write as extensively as I wanted to. I'll try to make up for that now.

THE SCRIPT

Every time I have worked on a play by Shakespeare, I have been amazed at how the writer's genius reveals itself more clearly the deeper I work on the show. Working on Hamlet and Measure for Measure, in particular, made me a fan of plays I wasn't too fond of to start with. The reverse, in an amusing way, has been true for Amadeus.

Not that it isn't a brilliant script, not at all, and it remains one of my favorite modern plays. But if you ever want to play the Amadeus drinking game, take a shot every time Salieri says something happened "suddenly." It's got to be 20 or more. Don't even get me started on all the interchangeable adjectives beginning with "a" "e" and "i".

This has been an incredibly difficult script to memorize. I gave myself easily three times as much time to learn my lines as I ever have before, only to discover that it was actually going to take ten times as much. Perhaps I'm spoiled by memorizing iambic pentameter, which is actually downright easy in many ways. Perhaps I'm just getting old; Gary Hopper once told me that he quit acting because memorization just got too difficult as he got older. Perhaps it's all the suddenlies. No fooling; this play is filled with repetition, and the repeats almost never have the same intention. The variations on "mercy," "pity" and "forgiveness" in the climactic scene just defied retention for weeks. I've never had such a hard time. The fact that I've never played a role half this size certainly didn't help.

The trickiest thing with the script has been honoring the intent of the punctuation marks while ignoring the timing they imply. Shaffer is inordinately fond of italics...ellipses—long dashes—and, quite suddenly, without warning, exclamation points! Occasionally even ALL CAPS! (Desperately implying an acting direction in the script:) Or all caps—IN ITALICS!

If we honored every punctuation mark, pause, and font emphasis, we'd have a three-and-a-half-hour melodrama largely featuring me yelling at God. (Okay, we kind of have that now.) Shaffer clearly has an idea in his head of exactly how every line should be delivered, which really rankles with me. It reminds me of Eugene O'Neill, who writes so many stage directions one wonders why he didn't just write a damn novel. At some point, I want my playwright to trust that his actors' and directors' ideas about the characters just might possibly be as good as his on occasion.

But Amadeus has, in fact, revealed itself to me as we've worked. It's a very different story than I thought it was, and at the same time it's more of what I thought than I had realized.

THE DIRECTOR

That's where James Bond (as seen on Letterman) comes in. He's had no compunctions about ignoring Shaffer's exotic formatting in the service of moving the action forward and setting up contrast for when the big emotional moments have to escalate. He's also mercilessly shattered many of my ideas about how the character's arc should travel. He always does this with me, and it's always for the best. As usual, I can't always remember where his ideas end and mine begin. It's glorious. The result is a trim two and a half hour production of a script full of melodramatic idioms that should really take about 3:10 if played as written.

Also, he makes me laugh. He sends me poetry in text message form and occasionally just ignores the playwright's intentions flagrantly. My favorite example, from about two weeks ago:

JAMES: Is there a question mark at the end of that "I amuse"?

ANDREW: No, it's a period.

JAMES: Are you sure it's not a question mark?

ANDREW: Yeah. "I amuse."

JAMES: Let's pretend it's a typo. Play it like a question mark.

THE COMPANY

I couldn't be more pleased with the cast and crew, if for no other reason than how much kindness and mercy they have shown a prickly lead actor desperately afraid he wasn't going to be as prepared for the show as he wanted to be. Feeling the pressure as never before (not to mention doing the hugest role I've ever had, while working two other jobs), I've been a bit of a prick the past few weeks, and that's really not the guy I am to work with.

Fortunately, Mike, Liz, Joe, Jamie the actor, Jake, Dave, Katie, Cynde, and Jamie the stage manager have all been fantastic and professional the whole while. One of the tragedies about a play of this sort, which depends so much on a single character's magnetism, is how so many beautifully portrayed characters can fade into the background, especially when so few of them have a memorable exit from the story. There's some really great work being done in this show: Katie's silent Katherina and petulant Strack, Jamie's priceless "gay toad" Rosenberg, the foppish choreography of the Venticelli Dave and Jake, Cynde's imperious, childish Joseph II, Joe's hyper-serious Van Swieten and doddering Bonno. Liz is always wonderful to work with and watch work, and her Constanze is Mozart's equal in cunning and commitment.

Mike Hamilton is my number one guy, a hard-working and risk-taking blur of energy and growing craft. Keep and eye on this young actor, Richmond, and cast him while he's here. His Mozart is a powerful engine in this show, and if my Salieri's scorn, sabotage, and finally pity come across at all honest, it is because Mike gives me so much to work with. He makes it so easy to hate his annoying, arrogant face throughout the first act, then to gloat over his dissolution in the second, but is his utter collapse at the end that destroys me every night.

We're all really working our asses off to make each other look good. It's freaking sweet.

THE COSTUMES

Speaking of looking good, Becky Cairns and Annie Hoskins have outdone themselves this time. I know I always say that (and Becky promises me she has amazing things in store for Midsummer), but this is even more true than usual. James calculated that they were effectively making something along the lines of 35 cents per hour on the costumes for this show (ain't Richmond theatre grand?), for which we have begun referring to them as "the Chinese children." Ah, sweatshop humor... Seriously, the CCs have worked a budgetary miracle this time around in recreating the lines and colors of the late 18th century. I say it every time, but they have outdone themselves. They are nothing short of the costuming MacGyver.

As a side note, it's a bit odd to be propositioning a character played by Liz Blake in the same jacket two years in a row. Next I'll be playing Uncle Peck in it...

AND FINALLY

I want to give a huge shout-out to Jamie Lish, our stage manager, who has come through in so very many ways for this show. Amadeus doesn't feel like it was a tech-heavy show until we're packing up at the end of the night. She keeps everything in order, including us silly players, and lays down the beats as sound board operator DJ Jamie up in the booth every night. And she always does it with a smile and a kind word. Except when she shouldn't.

Thanks to U of R for loaning us their sound design, keeping us from having to reinvent the wheel.

And thanks to Bryan Laubenthal for putting seats on the chairs. Woot.

Amadeus runs through March 8. Go to Richmond Shakespeare's website to order tickets!

First images from "Amadeus"

Eric Dobbs and the dazzling Becky Cairns / Annie Hoskins team worked their magic on Tuesday night for Amadeus' initial promotional pictures. Check it out:


Look at the size of Mike's hair! It's like some kind of shrub growing on his head. And wait until you see me in a wig.

Rehearsals are going like lightning. I don't know if I've ever blocked anything so fast; we're almost finished with act one. The cast is just brilliant top-to-bottom, very sharp and quick and simply a pleasure to spend time with, much less act beside. I'm not where I'd like to be, memorization-wise, but then again I never am. After last night's rehearsal I found a quiet seat at Barcode to highlight my key words and eat some pecan-crusted salmon. My waitress was hot. I should ask her out.

I read Amadeus every couple of years, so I'm finding that I already know large chunks of the show very well. It's the new ending, written for the 1999 revival, that is going to give me a hard time.

Blogadeus

Every actor has a list: a collection of the roles they most want to play. These are the roles that thrill us, that intrigue us, that challenge us, maybe even the roles that we alone know we could play even though no one else thinks we could pull it off. Sometimes they are the roles that got away, or the roles we watched another great actor perform. When we check the audition notices and see that a local company is producing a play with one of our list roles in it, our hearts beat a little faster and we start to dream. We may even decide that we wouldn't accept another role in the show, simply because the heartbreak of missed opportunity could interfere with our work.

My list is long and eclectic, from the classical to the contemporary, straight plays and musicals. The double-H's: Harold Hill in The Music Man and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Both Freddy and Anatoly in Chess, both Jesus and Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and Che in Evita. Edmund in King Lear and Bolingbroke in Richard II. Dysart in Equus, the Stage Manager in Our Town, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Alceste in The Misanthrope. Mark in Rent (for which I was called back in New York in 1998, a pure delight). Both Lee and Austin in True West, preferably alternating night-by-night. Father Flote in Red Noses, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Rakitin in A Month in the Country. I could go on and on. I dream a lot.

I know I will never get to play all, or likely even a fraction of these roles, though I have been able to check a few off my list in recent years: Romeo and Juliet's Mercutio, Julius Caesar's Cassius, and Twelfth Night's Feste. And my jones to perform in Othello, As You Like It, Doctor Faustus, and A Midsummer Night's Dream has been more than satisfied by directing those shows.

It was a thrill to read Scott Wichmann's blog and talk with the man himself last Fall as he tackled one of the roles on his list, Richard III. His tone of voice, in writing and in person, was different in approaching that particular role. He knew it was a dream come true from the start. I can't help but feel like now it's my turn. This winter, one of my greatest theatrical dreams is coming true as Richmond Shakespeare gives me the opportunity not only to play one of the roles on my list, but the one at the very top: Antonio Salieri in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus.

Amadeus has been my favorite contemporary play ever since I read it in high school. The drama, the language, the moral fireworks and the musical passion resonate in my soul like a bell, with Mozart's innocent arrogance and Salieri's unfulfillable envy both reflecting aspects of my own character that I am most ashamed of. Each of the two lead roles is a massive undertaking, with Mozart in many ways so close to home that I could almost play the role simply by memorizing the lines and getting on the stage opening night. (Well, not exactly. I don't talk about poop quite as much as Mozart does.) But it is the towering emptiness of Salieri that intrigues me more than any other character I have ever read.

In the next weeks, I intend to write more on the process of Amadeus than I ever have on a show I've blogged, if for no other reason than so I can look back, read it, and remember how I got to play my dream role.

First of all, my deep thanks to Grant Mudge for giving me the opportunity. It was almost three years ago that I broached the subject of Amadeus with Grant, when I had just come on board as Richmond Shakespeare's Director of Training. My suggestion was twofold: first, that the aesthetic of RS's five-actor format would be intriguing in the context of non-Elizabethan scripts, and second, that Amadeus would make a magnificent contribution to the Acts of Faith Festival.

The five-actor format, Richmond Shakespeare's calling card for over a decade, strips away layers of technical elements with the intention of giving theatre a greater immediacy and audience connection. The goal is to streamline the storytelling by relying on the tools of actor, director, and occasionally musician. It isn't that we don't like sets and lights, or that we denigrate their contribution to theatrical storytelling. We simply choose to focus on the actor's body and voice and the text, and to mine every ounce of potential from their skillful engagement. In Amadeus, we have a play that already relies heavily on actors and costumes (our favorite technical element) to mark the passage of time and change of status while eschewing period-specific scenery and lighting. We also have a play with seven principal characters, making doubling those actors with smaller roles very easy.

Beginning with a cast of seven, Director James Alexander Bond (as seen on Letterman) requested that we expand the cast to nine, allowing Salieri's gossip-gathering Venticelli to exist as two separate characters rather than doubles played by the actors portraying Strack and Van Sweiten. (This is a fairly important addition: it is difficult for the gossip gathereres to overhear characters who they can't share the stage with because they share bodies with them.) This puts Amadeus somewhere between the pocket-sized casts of five actors and the large company (for us) of 2 Henry IV's 16. By contrast, last year's Hamlet and 2007's Richard II had casts of 10. Spring's As You Like It was performed with five actors, Summer's with 16.

As for the show's Acts of Faith connection, it may be the most explicitly faith-focused show we have ever performed. Our previous festival offerings of The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Doctor Faustus, and Measure for Measure were of course all strongly faith-focused in their ways, from the anti-Semitic/anti-Christian conflicts of Merchant to Desdemona's Christlike forgiveness in Othello to Faustus' infernal setting and Measure's blatantly sinful hypocrisy. But Amadeus tops them all with an antihero who declares war against God for the divine sin of giving His greatest gift to a man deemed by Salieri as unworthy of it.

In the words of Peter Hall, the play's director both in its original incarnation and its 1999 revival, "Amadeus is probably the most successful serious play of the last half century. It has triumphed everywhere." On top of that, the film won a slew of Academy Awards, and featured iconic performances by Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, and of course F. Murray Abraham, whose nose I am not worthy to blow. In addition to Abraham's flawless performance, Salieri has been played by Paul Scofield, Ian McKellan, Brian Bedford and David Suchet just for starters. (The list of famous Mozarts is pretty impressive, too.) Invariably, when people find out we're doing Amadeus, the first question is "Who's playing Salieri?"

"Me," I answer, trying to keep my grin from splitting my face wide open.

I really thought I would feel intimidated or afraid of this, but I don't. I've wanted to play this part since I was 16 years old, and I've been thinking about it for a very long time. I know the show is in the best possible hands with James Bond (as seen on Letterman) directing it, and the cast is anchored by performers I trust completely and look forward to seeing every night (Liz Blake as Constanze, Cynde Liffick as Emperor Joseph), young talent we know we can rely on for energy and ideas (Katie Ford as Strack, David Janosik and Jake Allard as the Venticelli), and newcomers to Richmond Shakespeare whom I can't wait to introduce our audiences to (Jamie Reese as Rosenberg, Joseph Sultani as Van Sweiten, and of course Mike Hamilton as Mozart). With RTCC Award winner Becky Cairns and Annie Hoskins designing the costumes, I have no fears. I've been waiting two decades for this, and the company matches my wildest expectations.

Amadeus opens on the portentious Friday the 13th of February (preview on the 12th), and runs through March 8th. Stay tuned for more gushing blogs.