'Amadeus' at Pasadena Playhouse is a 'fever dream': Behind the scenes of the lavish show

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Pasadena Playhouse’s instrumentality connected Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” whitethorn beryllium the Tony Award-winning determination theater’s astir lavish accumulation to date.

The show, which opens Sunday, features a scrim that has been hand-painted with the notes of Mozart’s “Phantasie für eine Orgelwalze.” The full process, done by a squad of three, took 8 days from commencement to finish. When the scrim is illuminated, the aureate notes look to beryllium suspended similar stars successful the sky.

Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna “Nannerl,” handwrote galore of the genius composer’s compositions, and Playhouse caput creator Johnny LeBlanc said the radical worked to make an nonstop replica of her strokes. That attraction to item astatine each level is emblematic of this elaborate show.

Darko Tresnjak stands successful a ellipse of formed and unit backstage a theater.

The play is arsenic affluent successful endowment arsenic it is successful design. It stars Broadway seasoned and Tony victor Jefferson Mays arsenic Salieri, Sam Clemmett arsenic Mozart and Lauren Worsham arsenic Constanze, and is directed by Darko Tresnjak, who won a Tony successful 2014 for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.”

The red-and-gold, Baroque and Rococo aesthetics of the show, including the forced position of scenic decorator Alexander Dodge’s set, which makes a royal country look to vanish into the distance, were meticulously constructed to bespeak the twisted interiority of Salieri arsenic helium grapples with his seething hatred for the scatological young upstart arsenic it crashes against his cascading awe of Mozart’s divine music.

“The full play truly takes spot successful a intelligence space,” Tresnjak said during a caller rehearsal. “That determination is Salieri’s progressively addled encephalon and what happens wrong that encephalon strikes maine arsenic eminently contemporary.”

Mays called “Amadeus” a “memory play,” noting that “every facet of this accumulation is exploring that — it’s each filtered done the warped, distorted memories and imaginings of its unreliable narrator.”

The Pasadena Playhouse has 1 of the fewer remaining on-site country shops successful the industry, and its unit of designers, carpenters and painters created elaborate partition sconces and candle holders that go smaller and smaller arsenic they determination to the backmost of the stage, toward 2 tiny doors successful the center. At 1 constituent successful the show, histrion Matthew Patrick Davis, who plays Emperor Joseph II, steps done the doors.

Darko Tresnjak, wearing jeans and sneakers, sits successful an elaborate chair.

Mays describes the infinitesimal arsenic “delicious” due to the fact that Davis is rather gangly and bladed — adjacent much truthful successful his 2-inch, 18th period heels — and erstwhile helium unfurls his assemblage into the country and proceeds down the stage, the assemblage realizes what a gigantic fig helium is successful Salieri’s mind.

“It’s each changeable done with these ‘Alice successful Wonderland’ moments of surrealism,” Mays said. “It feels similar a fever dream.”

Music is cardinal to Salieri’s world, and the dependable plan by Jane Shaw strives to entree the otherworldly powerfulness of Mozart’s euphony done layered backing tracks. An electrical keyboard programmed to dependable similar a fortepiano is besides embedded successful a handcrafted instrument, which actors with philharmonic grooming tin play.

Tresnjak has a agelong past directing with L.A. Opera and its departing euphony director, James Conlon, worked with Clemmett connected conducting. He besides gave the histrion a past acquisition astir what the creation signifier would person been similar successful Mozart’s time. Jeffrey Bernstein, the founding creator and enforcement manager of the Pasadena Chorale, drilled the formed connected their chorale passages.

The cardinal to creating specified a richly textured theatrical situation is not a bloated budget, said Tresnjak, it’s engaging a full assemblage of artists — onstage and backstage — and giving them escaped reign to acceptable their creativity loose. Pasadena Playhouse, which is cognize for being a resourceful company, made that easy, helium added.

The amusement is buoyed by its classical stagecraft, with flats, flight stairs and rolling platforms. There is nary machine automation and thing that moves is moved manually, said subordinate manager Jenny Slattery, pointing retired the theater’s antiquated manus winches that power a mobile throne.

“There is thing magical that comes from a resonance betwixt the taxable substance and the aesthetic and the behind-the-scenes techniques,” said Slattery.

A sketch and cloth swatch of an 18th period reddish costume.

Linda Cho designed the costumes and L.A. Opera fabricated the extravagant 18th period garments, which Slattery said person go a “staff tourer attraction.” The cloth was sourced successful New York and shipped to L.A.; the ribbons were made by hand. Mays said helium got giddy and breathless erstwhile helium archetypal stepped into his costume.

Costumes for "Amadeus," including an 18th period reddish men's suit and pinkish dress.

“It makes each the quality erstwhile you cognize that your sleeves are chopped successful a bias and your arms person to bash definite things,” helium explained. “I find a costume, peculiarly the costumes of this precocious 18th period period, to beryllium truthful informative astir physicality and however you move.”

In rehearsal, Mays afloat inhabits his relation — and his costume — moving with a lithe formality arsenic helium strives to eavesdrop connected Mozart and Constanze. His revulsion and heavy attraction are connected afloat display. The histrion said it is not his volition to play Salieri arsenic a mustache-twirling villain, but alternatively arsenic human, recognizable and understandable.

The sleeve of an elaborate 18th period reddish jacket.

“We are each Salieri to varying degrees,” Mays said. “What interests maine are everyman aspects of him. The banality of his evil and the mode that evil actions look to ever emergence retired of fearfulness and insecurity.”

The lighting plan by Pablo Santiago helps manifest Salieri’s uncomfortable emotions onstage.

“Darko is idiosyncratic who likes to enactment successful much of the intellectual, affectional abstraction alternatively than realism. So a batch of it is astir utilizing the acceptable successful a much abstract way,” said Santiago. “It’s astir shapes and colour and creating afloat signifier pictures that are interesting.”

The communicative of Salieri and Amadeus, said Mays, is 1 of twisted love. Salieri gets up each greeting and tries to destruct that which helium loves most. Playing the troubled antihero is “not altogether pleasant,” Mays said, “because you’re marinating successful this cesspool of thwarted ambitions and inadequacy, but past you’re surrounded by this quality that is simply a changeless reminder of your ain failings.”

When the curtain yet rises, the formed and unit anticipation the signifier volition beryllium its ain happening of quality — its ambition afloat realized.

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