This was a magnificent production. I was so lucky to work on it.
Such eloquent writing from Peter Shaffer, leaving Peter Hall needing little more to do than allow these gargantuan talents to just get on with it.
John Bury's set design and lighting were a revelation. I'd worked on many West End musicals with their huge rigs and staging, and here Bury's simplicity stunned me. It was minimal without being in the least bit austere. It was pure elegance. Except... except maybe for that huge chandelier (that my drinking buddy Steve Milne up in flies one day sent crashing to the stage!).
Young Simon Callow's Mozart was the performance of a lifetime. The part seemed written for him. And maybe it was - Shaffer would sit in on rehearsals making notes which would then become re-writes.
But the grand centerpiece was Scofield's Salieri. Watch this clip and weep. And somehow he did that every night...
I also worked on the NT tour with Frank Finlay playing the lead (Scofield refused to tour) and it was remarkable how the two men could deliver the same lines, with the same directions, and yet be so very different. Finlay was Everyman, consumed with jealousy, and feeling he deserved Mozart's genius. While Scofield was the cultured civilized man who really could claim some genuine title to it. A little ironic perhaps that Finlay was an active catholic, and on the tour would seek out the nearest RC church to pray each morning.
I shall never forget Scofield's performance. Such a brilliant actor, and the stage is now very much a lesser place without him.
12 янв 2009
