Thematically Peter Shaffer's new play [Amadeus] is bold and of profound interest: it deals with the mysteries of genius and of the creative process (as did Equus) and with the contrast between the overcivilised and the natural man (as did The Royal Hunt of the Sun), between sexual restraint and the free flow of self-expression through sex (as did The Battle of Shrivings)…. [Amadeus] is complex and built on an epic scale.

And here, I feel, lies its problem: neither the form nor the language of Amadeus is up to its tremendous subject-matter. To put a man like Mozart on the stage is, admittedly, the most daunting of all projects. How can genius be made manifest in the theatre? The writer of the play would have to be of equal genius to invent lines of convincing impact, otherwise the genius in question would become a mere lay-figure, a mere name being dropped. In the case of Mozart the difficulty is compounded a hundred-fold by the fact that in his letters Mozart reveals himself as an individual of earthy sexuality and scatological expressiveness. What a paradox: the most sublime spirituality issuing forth from a man who is capable of making endless jokes about shit and piss!

Here, I think, Shaffer made his big mistake: it is one thing to be scatological in letters to intimate relations (as Mozart was) another to make him use that kind of language in public, in polite society, at the very court of the Emperor. And this precisely is what Shaffer does: the result is a figure of grotesque inappropriateness, a veritable monstrosity….

On the other hand, Mozart is not really the main character of the play, which is seen from the point of view of Mozart's rival, Salieri, who tells his story in flashback, quick-changing from doddering elder into the dashing courtier of his prime and back again to salivating dotage. It is Salieri whose tragedy we see: the tragedy of the man of modest talent, musical enough to recognise (perhaps alone among his contemporaries) the true greatness of genius, but not talented enough himself to match it….

[Yet] the flatness of the language in which the part is written and the limitations of the potential of the character (who explicitly represents 'mediocrity' writ large) militate against its reaching [any] real heights….