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Let’s face it, even though musical theatre is full of big swings at unlikely subjects – Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Mis, Hamilton – taking on arguably the greatest composer in history is a bit bloody cheeky. And lo, sundry musical theatre talents squander their voices on this vapid pop-rock work, which foregrounds the roles of Mozart’s sister and wife in a soap-operatic trot through his short life.
Creator Charli Eglinton has a facility for creating inoffensive, vaguely anthemic numbers that sound slightly like other songs, and which very occasionally reference Mozart. But her lyrics are forced and awkward and her dialogue dreadful. “Sod Paris, I was going to Italy!”. “I’ve just written a concerto!” “Have you?” And so on.
Director/choreographer Taylor Walker’s production is full of people striding about, furiously jotting down annotations on splotchy manuscripts with quills. His rudimentary choreography and Julia Pschedezki’s deconstructed costumes adorned with frills and laces recall a low-budget 1980s New Romantic video. Justin Williams’s set, a giant ‘M’ with a starving-composer’s garret above, resembles the MTV logo.
Mostly I felt sorry for the cast, which includes two fine-voiced former queens from Six. Aimie Atkinson is Mozart’s older sibling, musical pathfinder and protector Nannerl, saddled here with a couple of grumpy numbers about a talented woman’s meagre lot in 18th century European life. Erin Caldwell is his beloved wife, muse and buttress Constanze, using what I presume is her own Scottish accent to berate and inspire the brilliant but feckless composer. “Wolfie, they’re lovin’ it!” she reassures him at the premiere of The Magic Flute. To which he responds with a little, streptococcal cough presaging his imminent demise aged 35.
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Mozart himself is played in early life by a child actress (Carla Lopez-Corpas the night I saw it) and as a sort-of grown-up by Jack Chambers, complete with a hairdo that includes a top-knot and side-locks. His numbers are littered with challenging octave changes, hiccupy half rhymes and epenthesis (extra syllables, like “li-yives” for “lives”, to make a line scan. I had to look that up.) Meanwhile Jordan Luke Gage (from & Juliet and Titanique) stalks the rear stage, drenched in Goth mascara and hairspray, as his malevolently saturnine rival composer, Salieri.
Despite some atrocious rhymes, Doomed to Fail and Know Your Place become standouts of the evening thanks to his powerhouse delivery. Again, though, you think it’s either audacious or foolish of Eglinton to reduce the creative antagonism so subtly explored in Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus and Miloš Forman’s later film version to a bratty spat between two Blitz kids. Douglas Hansell gets the thankless, underwritten role of Mozart’s dad and Gloria Onitiri gets the night’s most deathlessly dreadful line as Constanze’s mum, telling Wolfgang how his wife’s retreat to a birthing facility is going: “Yeah, yeah, yeah – spa’s doing her the world of good.”
I know, I know: musical theatre needs new experimental blood with fresh takes and fresh voices. I’ve done the same research into Eglinton as she initially did on Nannerl (“a bit of surface digging on the internet,” as she told Crossover Music Magazine in 2022). She seems a driven go-getter, who only left school in 2018, transitioned to theatre from writing manga, and has “a current slate of over 12 original musicals”. That suggests Mozartian levels of productivity, but I can only hope the other 11 works are better than this one, or that she concentrates more in future on quality and collaboration rather than auterism and quantity.
To 30 Aug, theotherpalace.co.uk
