ABC 612 Theatre Review
6 May 2011 

Guests: Sue Gough, Doug Kennedy
Interviewer: Chris O’Brien

Sue Gough: If you want to go and see a really good play in Brisbane at the moment, go and see Amadeus.

Doug Kennedy: At the Conservatorium

SG: I saw a run-through, which is not the full thing, and I was swept away! What a cast! Robert Coleby, Bob Newman…Steven Grives as Salieri is chilling and wonderful. The fabulous young Tama Matheson who not only plays Mozart, but directs. The music is stunning. The antiques on stage are real. And this is a piece that will arouse the emotions. You cannot not be engaged by a beautifully written piece by Peter Shaffer.

DK: It’s actually a re-working of a production that was done two years ago at the Masonic Lodge here in Brisbane, wasn’t it?

SG: Which worked a treat.

DK: It was a different cast then, Eugene Gilfedder was in it. It’s the same director.

SG: If you want to go and see some really good theatre in Brisbane, catch this, it’s on for a week.

Chris O’Brien: For those of us plebs who’ve seen the movie, but not the play, because of course the play did precede the movie didn’t it?

SG: Absolutely, and the play is much better than the movie.

CO: Is it?

SG: It is.  It’s not as comic-book as I think the movie was.

DK: I disagree.

SG: [Laughs] Alright!

CO: I give you full permission to disagree violently.

DK: No violence!

SG: I think the ending of the play has people in tears. I’m not sure that the ending of the movie did the same thing.

CO: Now the ending in the movie has Mozart basically writing his own requiem as he’s dying. Does that happen in the play?

SG: No, in the play originally, and I’m not sure they can do this quite as well at the Conservatorium, but certainly in the Masonic Lodge…he’s dead and he’s carried out into the light. It’s… [gasps].

DK: The reason I disagree is they’re both great pieces of work. It’s just that I’ve always believed that theatre and movies, just like theatre, movies and books are all different and they bring something different to the table.

SG: You are absolutely right!

Additional comments by Sue Gough
emailed to Gary Thorpe (General Manager 4MBS ClassicFM)
9 May 2011

“I thought Steven Grives’ Salieri was quite amazing. He showed, in subtly mounting steps, a good man torn apart by the injustice of God’s abandonment. In spite of his wicked treatment of Mozart, one couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for the ravaged soul that Grives brought to life.”