The jealousy hasn’t even started, and already people want more of it.
Pasadena Playhouse announced Wednesday that it has extended its production of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” through March 15, adding a fifth week of performances before the show opens on February 11. The theater, citing what it called early popularity and high demand, had previously added four performances before making this latest expansion.
The extension reunites several architects of a Broadway hit. Director Darko Tresnjak won the 2014 Tony Award for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.” So did costume designer Linda Cho. Jefferson Mays, who will play the tormented court composer Antonio Salieri, was nominated for that same production, in which he played nine roles. Lauren Worsham, cast here as Mozart’s wife Constanze, earned a Tony nomination and won a Drama Desk Award for “Gentleman’s Guide.”
Scenic designer Alexander Dodge, projection designer Aaron Rhyne, and lighting designer Pablo Santiago round out a creative team heavy with Broadway credentials.
Mays, a veteran character actor with a chameleonic range, won his Tony in 2004 for the solo play “I Am My Own Wife,” in which he portrayed a German transvestite who survived both the Nazis and the Stasi. He appeared opposite Hugh Jackman in the 2022 Broadway revival of “The Music Man” and earned acclaim for his one-man adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.”
Playing opposite him as the brash young Mozart is Sam Clemmett, the British actor who originated the role of Albus Potter in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” in both London and New York. Clemmett appeared in Netflix’s “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” in 2023.
Shaffer’s play, which imagines a poisonous rivalry between the mediocre Salieri and the divinely gifted Mozart at the 18th-century Viennese court, won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1981. The original Broadway production, starring Ian McKellen as Salieri and Tim Curry as Mozart, ran for 1,181 performances. The 1984 film adaptation, directed by Miloš Forman with F. Murray Abraham in the Salieri role, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Pasadena Playhouse, the State Theater of California since 1937, received the Regional Theatre Tony Award in 2023. The theater has operated under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman since 2016.
The production’s cast also includes Kenajuan Bentley as Van Swieten, Matthew Patrick Davis as Joseph II, Jennifer Chang and Hilary Ward as the Venticelli, and John Lavelle as Orsini-Rosenberg. Lavelle, who won a Drama Desk Award for his performance in “The Royale” at Lincoln Center Theater, is a member of the Pasadena/Altadena community.
Performances run Tuesday through Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Avenue. The schedule varies: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings at 8 p.m.; Thursday at 7 p.m.; Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Tickets, starting at $40, are available at pasadenaplayhouse.org, by phone at 626-356-7529, or at the box office.
Salieri spent a lifetime believing God had betrayed him by granting genius to a vulgarian. Now, Pasadena audiences will have an extra week to watch him rage.
Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Avenue, Pasadena. For more call 626-356-7529 or visit pasadenaplayhouse.org. Tickets: Starting at $40.
