Amadeus by National Theatre

After the National Theatre production...

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Francesco: Some good lines by Peter Shaffer reminiscent of Robert Bolt. Salieri on his two assistants: one keeps me clothed the other keeps me full. One covers me up, the other fills me up. Something like that.

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Ricardo: I wonder, Mozart, I mean, was he?

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Francesco: Was he what?

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Ricardo: So crazy, so mental, so mad.

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Francesco: So unhinged, so disturbed, so psychotic? Perhaps he was. Salieri said so. Many others too. The price of genius?

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Ricardo: Was he poisoned do you think?

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Francesco: Some say he died of a strep infection. Swollen legs. Lot of deaths around 1791 and 1792 attributed to that in Vienna. Hard to tell 250 years later of course, but sometimes the truth is less dramatic than the drama.

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Voice-over

Beyond the circumstances of Mozart’s death is the the debate over whether he could have suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome. The symptoms... and they are mentioned in the recollections of friends and acquaintances and picked up by the playwright. The tics, the jumps, the scatology make for arresting drama after all. Throw poisoning by a jealous colleague into the mix and there you have a formula for drawing in an audience. But a great play. The poetic nudges aside the prosaic.

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