Theatre review: Saving Mozart

The Other Palace's latest attempt to come up with the next big historical pop musical to rival SIX takes us to 18th century Austria for Charli Eglinton's (book, music and lyrics) Saving Mozart. Eglinton's idea is that it was the women in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (Jack Chambers) life who did the saving (of his memory, at least; given he died penniless aged 35 they didn't do the best job of saving Mozart himself.) With their father Leopold (Douglas Hansell) essentially seeing them as a way to money and influence, young Wolfgang (Carla Lopez Corpas, alternating with Izzie Monk) and his older sister Nannerl (Aimie Atkinson) are toured around the Royal courts of Europe as musical prodigies. But Leopold's treatment of Nannerl is even more cynical than it first appears: Once she's served her purpose in pushing Wolfgang to greatness, she's to be ditched from the act and married off.

In recent years I've been coming to the conclusion that one of the biggest challenges for a new musical is getting the amount of songs right: A lot of those that don't click with me have either too few or too many, and Saving Mozart is firmly in the "leave 'em wanting less" camp.

It wouldn't be an issue if it was through-sung and using music for narrative, but here we get literally seconds of spoken plot before the band kicks in again for the next big number, choreographer Taylor Walker giving us characters clambering over chairs and Justin Williams' set, lots of swapping around of black parasols for some reason, and a fair bit more flamenco than I usually associate with Mozart.

It doesn't serve the story well - the most successful element is in giving us insight into the mistreated and forgotten Nannerl, although how historically accurate it is is another matter, given other elements: We really don't come away with much on why Mozart's genius didn't translate into success in his own lifetime, beyond him falling victim to the jealous Salieri, whom Jordan Luke Gage plays as, essentially, a sexy vampire.

And if you're going to borrow from Amadeus you could at least give Mozart himself a personality: Maybe he needn't be quite as into watersports if you're going for a family audience, but here even any suggestion of flamboyance is the suggestion of his wife Costanze (Erin Caldwell,) who becomes the major female influence of the second act. Much camper than the man himself is Gloria Onitiri as both his mother and mother-in-law, stomping around the stage like a dominatrix in a dusty wig (costumes by Julia Pschedezki, hair by Renate Harter.)

In Markus Olzinger's energetic production the vocals are decidedly mixed, with Atkinson, Gage and Caldwell coming off the best, but it's overall entertaining and flies by quickly. It's just a pity it ends up choked by its own songs: I wasn't counting but I wouldn't be surprised if the first act alone had more than the entirety of SIX, and as well as what that does to the pacing and storytelling it doesn't do the songs themselves any favours. There's a few strong, catchy ones that with a little bit more work could have turned into memorable bangers, but with the emphasis on quantity you get a fun enough evening, but come out humming the wigs.

Saving Mozart by Charli Eglinton is booking until the 30th of August at The Other Palace.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Danny Kaan.