Two things:
1. As a rule, I do not read theater reviews until a show has closed.
2. I am exceptionally vain.
After being assured a couple times that good things were being said about Amadeus, I broke down like my old ’89 Mustang and checked out a couple of reviews.
“Jared McDaris is intoxicating as a show-stealing Mozart: brash, crude and shamelessly egotistical, but also charming, funny and passionate. Even more impressive, McDaris captures the emotional depth of a character who rightly tells us that while ‘my tongue is stupid, my heart isn’t.’ ” – Mike Fischer, JS Online (McDaris’s Mozart Hits Right Notes In World’s Stage’s Amadeus)
“[Gretchen Mahkorn] and McDaris have good chemistry, and the scenes they share — some infectiously joyous and others heartbreaking — are consistently convincing.” – Mike Fischer again, JS Online (McDaris’s Mozart Hits Right Notes In World’s Stage’s Amadeus)
“McDaris does a really good job of bringing a very human and very passionate artist to the stage.” – Russ Bickerstaff, Express Milwaukee (A Close-Up For Amadeus and Salieri)
So that was pretty cool. Mozart is surprisingly exhausting, despite the fact that he has maybe one-fifth of the lines that Salieri has (maybe less), and as much as I like to pretend I’m above public accolades, at the end of the day I’m as susceptible to praise as anyone else.
Keep It Together.