Amadeus

Westport Actors Ammie Renée Brown and Manny Lieberman

to appear as Constanze Weber, Mozart’s Wife and Baron von Strack

in the Town Players of New Canaan production of

Peter Shaffer’s Tony award winning play Amadeus

which opens Friday, November 4th and plays through Saturday, November 19th

at the Powerhouse Theatre in Waveny Park, New Canaan

             Westport actors Ammie Renée Brown and Manny Lieberman are each making their debut performances with the Town Players of New Canaan’s  in its production of Peter Shaffer’s Tony award winning Amadeus, appearing respectively, as Constanze Weber, Mozart’s wife, and Royal Chamberlain Count Johann Kilian Von Strack.  The play is a fictionalized account of composer Antonio Salieri’s corroding envy and destruction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a provocative work that weaves a confrontation between mediocrity and genius into a tale of breathtaking dramatic power.  The show opens at the Powerhouse Theatre in Waveny Park, New Canaan on Friday, November 4th and plays through November 19th.  Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students (through graduate school) and seniors (62).  To reserve seats, please call (203) 966-7371 or go to info@tpnc.org.

             A theatre major at William Jewell College whose small theatre department gave her lots of stage time, Ammie Renée Brown says “it’s been fun to do the dramaturgy on Constanze and to make the historical and fictional Constanzes work together.”  She has found that Peter Shaffer’s Constanze is a ninny and more flamboyant than the Constanze she has discovered in Jane Glover’s book, Mozart’s Women--an intelligent and strong individual and a serious companion to Mozart with whom she was very much in love.  Because in Amadeus Mozart and Constanze’s love is presented as earthy, ribald and playful, Ammie is delighted that she always feels safe on the stage with Bobby Pavia, who portrays Mozart.  “Everything,” she says, “is a risk and the audience is always going to judge what you do.  To be comfortable on stage isn’t always easy, but with Bobby I am.”  Her community theatre credits include Moon over Buffalo and Pasta, Passion, and Pistols with the Pound Ridge Theatre Company; The Unforgettable Whatshisname at the Ridgefield Theatre Barn; Mauritius with the Westport Community Theatre; Much Ado about Nothing and Tartuffe with Upstart Crow and assistant director credit for John Gabriel Borkman also with Upstart Crow.

             To Amadeus, Manny Lieberman brings well over a half century of theatre experience.  As early as fifth and sixth grade his Jewish immigrant parents dragged their Irish son to all the shows of the 50s.  By age 12 or 13, Manny had read all of Dickens and loved the language.  At CCNY he started with Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Summers at Queens College he played heroic figures, Greek tragedy one summer, a Roman festival the next.  He got a doctorate of fine arts in theatre and lived in a $56.34 a month studio apartment above Chumley’s Bar while appearing in Off Broadway shows. He recalls, “Peter Shaffer brought life to the dramatic stage, imaginative and historic romance.  The Brits are raised with the culture of Europe and are familiar with Greek and Roman myths.  They like to play with that.”  In fact, Amadeus is the last in Shaffer’s trilogy that began with Royal Hunt of the Sun and Equus, plays in which middle aged men, the explorer Pizarro, the psychiatrist Martin Dysart, and the pedestrian court composer Antonio Salieri must face their own demons as they are challenged by the genius of young men, the Aztec King, Atahualpa, the seventeen year old stable boy Alan Strang, and the 26-year old Mozart. In Amadeus, Mr. Lieberman plays Count von Strack, second in command in the Austrian Empire after the emperor, a German nationalist surrounded by Italian artists.  “He is very supportive of Mozart,” says Mr. Lieberman, and is hopeful Mozart will be able to pioneer the emperor’s notion of developing a national theatre that will do comic and other productions in German.”  However, once the uncontrollable Mozart spouts something rude about the emperor, von Strack’s enthusiasm wanes.    Mr. Lieberman was most recently seen at the Westport Community Theater playing Mr. Larabee in Sabrina Fair. Last year he performed with Playhouse On the Green in Bridgeport as Roat in Wait Until Dark, and Prof. Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes.  

             Director  Lynne Bolton, who directed TPNC’s Enchanted April, Copenhagen, Arcadia, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, as well as Mauritius at Westport Community Theatre, says that the theatrical convention of  Salieri’s flashback monologues delivered to the audience helps her approach Salieri’s inner duplicity and seeming above-board helpfulness extended to Mozart. Ms. Bolton muses, “Life for Salieri, for all of us, comes down to small moments in time when we decide which road to take.”  She cites the scene when Emperor Joseph II yawns at the final curtain of The Magic Flute. “Not a genius, but brilliant, Salieri singularly understands Mozart’s genius which tortures him. He cannot reconcile the coarseness of Mozart, the man, with his music, which is the voice of angels, the voice of God. Salieri could have said, ‘Your majesty this is the most brilliant piece of music ever composed.’ Instead he takes the low road and we watch Salieri make the sinister choice to destroy Mozart.” 

            Asked, “What draws audiences to Amadeus?” Ms. Bolton responds, “We get to hear Mozart’s music and to know the man behind the music. The scenes that surround the music explain Mozart and his music.  Mozart takes his mundane, everyday life and turns it into genius music.  He makes us look at our everyday lives and hear God’s voice in our lives.  The journey of this genius moves the actors and the audience. I am also excited that the Town Players’ new sound system will give Mozart’s music and Vienna intrigue such immediacy!’

             “Mozart was music’s first super star, and Amadeus puts a face, a body, a life to the music we hear,” proffers Bobby Pavia (of Stamford), who will appear as the composer. “Mozart is a role of a lifetime that consumes all my emotional time.  People are coming to see who Mozart was and deserve to find out.”  Recreating the role of Salieri which he first performed twenty years ago, Eric Schultz comes to the Town Players from Nantucket where Lynne Bolton directed him in The Book of Liz this past summer. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36) anchors Mr. Schultz’s understanding of Salieri and his appreciation that over the two decades between Amadeus’s London première in 1979 and its 1999 Broadway revival playwright Peter Shaffer re-wrote the crucial Last Encounter scene between Salieri and Mozart six times. Wrote Mr. Shaffer, “They represent a huge rethinking of the whole trajectory of action concerning Salieri’s growing guilt, which I had long wanted to explore in greater depth:  a need for atonement—first broached in the earliest production with Scofield—and more and more urgently arising in the man from his realization of what he has actually done with his own self-debasing life.”

            Supporting the protagonists will be Ammie Renée Brown of Westport as Constanze Weber, Mozart’s wife, Tom Petrone of Norwalk as Emperor Joseph II, Manny Lieberman of Westport as Count Johann Kilian Von Strack, Royal Chamberlain, Gary Battaglia of Wilton as Count Orsini-Rosenberg, Director of the Imperial Opera, John Pyron of Fairfield as Baron Gottfried Van Sweiten, Prefect of the Imperial Library.  The Venticelli, the whisperers whom Salieri pays to bring him gossip of Vienna, are Megan Harris of Greenwich and Michael Hodges of New Canaan.  Ms. Harris will also appear in the role of opera singer Katerina Cavalieri.

            A multi-talented thespian, Eric Shultz has also designed and hand painted the set which has “a classical, rich feel that will work for all the scenes.”  His design in 2011 for the Theatre of the Republic in Conway S.C.’s production of Titanic, The Musical won a “Torry" Award for best set design. Sandra Galley who designs lights for schools and regional theatres in northern Massachusetts and also for the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket is coming to the Powerhouse to create the Amadeus light plot. Coordinating the costumes, which are being rented, and the wigs which the Town Players has purchased will be Deborah Shields Runestad.  Cheryl Petrone will head up make-up. Keeping all these many balls in the air will be the unflappable and always pleasant stage manager Kathleen Klatte of Yonkers, who will also appear in the silent role of Mrs. Salieri.

Photo Caption for Amadeus – Salieri looks askance at joy:  Antonio Salieri (Eric Schultz) looks askance at the earthy joy experienced by Constanze Weber, Mozart’s wife (Ammie Renée Brown) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Bobby Pavia) whose glorious music he cannot reconcile with the coarser, common life the genius composer lives.  Photo credit:  Tom Hughey

Photo Caption for Amadeus – Cast in character:  The cast members of the Town Players of New Canaan’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus with their facial expressions in character are (seated) Eric Schultz, Bobby Pavia, Ammie Renée Brown and Megan Harris.  Standing are John Pyron, Gary Battaglia, Tom Petrone, Michael Hodges, and Manny Lieberman, Photo Credit:  Tom Hughey

Photo Caption for Amadeus – von Strack, Mozart & Constanze & Salieri:  Second in command after the emperor Count von Strack (Manny Lieberman) ponders that the newly arrived to Vienna composer Mozart (Bobby Pavia), supported by his loving wife Constanze (Ammie Renée Brown), will compose comic and other operas in German, while Antonio Salieri (Eric Schultz) sees nothing but a threat to his own ascendancy.  Photo credit:  Tom Hughey