Adrian Nobel is a splendid leader, able to lift a company to new levels of confident achievement, but he works best as a collaborator. Especially with Shakespeare.

His staging of KING LEAR for the Old Globe Theatre last summer was a masterly interpretation notable for its emphasis on the language without ignoring the spectacle. His TEMPEST, now on the Globe’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Stage, is intriguing for its uncommonly complex Prospero and its yeasty use of music. And Alan Bennett’s MADNESS OF GEORGE III last summer is a script that requires the strong directorial vision it got.

Peter Shaffer’s AMADEUS, newly added to the Globe summer rotation, is quite another matter. As director, Noble has little choice but to serve the author’s fervid vision just as Shaffer, for all his defiant fist-shaking at heaven, ends up serving the serene genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Shakespeare welcomes creative collaborators and the plays usually thrive. Alan Bennett needs collaborators to get his piece off the ground. But Mozart demands, in any performance situation, fidelity to his music. And since the music is what propels this play, Noble properly recedes into the scenery. It’s a waste, in a way. A less interesting director could have done well enough just by following Shaffer’s stage directions and Noble could have turned to something more demanding, like Restoration comedy or continental farce.

Still, it’s a fine AMADEUS, efficient, lush, dressed exquisitely and appropriately deferential to the motor that drives the work: All that music.

Shaffer, as many of us know from the 1980 Broadway production and the 1984 film, chose to come at one of the world’s most sublime artistic geniuses through the eyes of Antonio Salieri, a lesser talent but a greater success at the moment. Shaffer’s Salieri is so devastated by envy that he renounces morality, ethics, good works and religion, resolving to get revenge by destroying God’s favorite.

This is an approach to a tale of transcendent genius that promises more meat that the usual “and then he wrote...” biography. And no dramatist has done more sensitive and successful descriptions of music’s power. Eventually, however, the philosophical ironies pile up until, somewhere in the second act, they drag the play to a halt, with nobody dead yet. Shaffer tinkered with the ending right up through the film play but never lifted it out of a certain cheap-thrill ooze.

At the Globe, Noble tinkers with the published ending, dumping the menacing masked figure that haunts Mozart’s last days and substituting a visit my Salieri himself. Since there are still three more endings to go, the maskless visitor suggests that Noble has some idea of tying up the story more realistically. But we’re too far into the maze of sentimental mysticism for that.

The real Mozart wasn’t the scatological fruitcake of this play nor was Salieri a satanic villain. There were rumors in the early 18th Century that Mozart’s messy death involved foul play and some of them implicated Salieri. As these things often work out, the composer might now be completely forgotten has Shaffer not put him onstage. Instead, in the last few decades his work has been taken seriously, recorded, produced and accepted at a rate higher than he deserves, a genuine irony that eclipses the ironies Shaffer labored to create.

For his Salieri, Noble has the excellent Miles Anderson, rapidly becoming a Globe favorite with his George III and his Prospero. Anderson brings a commanding vocabulary of gesture to match his skills at building character continuity to what is basically a monologue with illustrations. Like his director, Anderson is a good and faithful servant.

Excess has been encouraged in playing Mozart, with the petulant impatience and quirky antics, so Jay Whittaker deserves gratitude for his restraint. He does more with glittering eyes than with comic flatulence and his timing is delicious. One of the play’s best remembered scenes is when the young Mozart, new at court, takes a welcoming march composed by Salieri and, with a couple of adjustments, evolves it into “Non Piu Andrai,” a greatest-hits aria from THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. Whittaker plays this divinely, ignoring the piece, then remembering it exactly, then playing his revision in a flamboyant style inspired by Chico Marx.

Winslow Corbett is a juicy morsel as Constanze Mozart, able to gin up pathos in a seamy scene and sorrowful loss as a widow. Donald Carrier is a most believable Austrian emperor – he who decides Mozart’s work has “too many notes” – and Charles Janasz, Anthony Cochrane and Michael Stewart Allen play the wigs (not suits) of the court with precise polish.

It’s a handsome production thanks to the parade of splendid costumes by Deirdre Clancy and Ralph Funicello’s adjustments to his basic summer set, side panels paned with dull mirrors and especially a clean-lined classical proscenium arch, complete with French-rigged curtains, serving many purposes. Alan Burrett’s lighting design makes good use of footlights and shadows.

Noble has served his sources well and truly, though a bit more fuss over the tiny fragments of performed opera would have been nice. What’s mildly puzzling is why this play was chosen. Is there some link with TEMPEST through the music? Is there a suggestion that something about the play needs reexamining? Or is it simply that this Salieri is the type of role that brings Noble and Anderson the rewards of successful collaboration?

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE

DOWNLOAD CAST LIST HERE