How was Amadeus staged?

[Jay94]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 4:36am

The film is such an epic, it's hard to imagine how it could be done on stage

[South Fl Marc]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 8:47am

The reason you feel it couldn't be done on stage is - it couldn't. The stage play Amadeus is Very different from the screenplay. Characters were added, scenes changed ... it was rewritten to be a movie.

Personally I love the stage show better. The last 10 minutes of act one - an amazing tour de force soliloquy for Salieri - is reduced in the movie to a ten second, non spoken scene. But the way it was done on stage would not have worked in a movie.

Buy the script of the play and you can see how it is staged. The play is wonderful. Hopefully there will be a revival soon. The last revival was dreadful.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 9:49am

The stage show relied on the audience to use their imagination more than the movie.

[Huss417]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 10:09am

It was the play that had me on the edge of my seat. It could have been done on a bare stage and wouldn't have made a difference. The OBC and the play were both thrilling.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 10:55am

I loved and was mesmorized by the entire show. Marc makes excellent points. BOTH were successful and wonderful in their own right because the were made to work for their specific medium.

[landlocked_mermaid]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 11:50am

Amadeus is one of my most favorite movies and I had the opportunity to see it on stage a couple of years back at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre too and I loved the stage version too.

[newintown]

Posted: 6/25/12 at 12:20pm

Stunningly theatrical plays like Amadeus, Equus, Angels in America, and many more, are usually treated literally and "realistically" when transferred to the screen. If you've seen the play first, the film often seems like a paler imitation.