ajhlovestheatre

SAVING MOZART

Book, music and lyrics by Charli Eglinton

directed by Taylor Walker and Markus Olzinger

The Other Palace, London – until 30 August 2025

running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval 

https://theotherpalace.co.uk/saving-mozart/

Hamilton and Six have a lot to answer for! Ever since those entertainment juggernauts burst onto the popular cultural scene, there has been a plethora of musicals telling historical, or at least period-specific, stories with pounding anachronistic scores. Some have been better than others, and here comes another one.

You might have thought Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus had the last word in mythologising the life of Mozart but you’d be wrong. Charli Eglinton’s Saving Mozart, receiving its UK premiere having been seen earlier this year in Austria, isn’t even the only rock-pop tuner inspired by the legendary classical composer. The 1999 Mozart! musical was a big hit on the continent and only last year Mozart, Her Story, centred on Wolfgang’s gifted sister Nannerl, also a principal character here, received an all-star concert presentation at Drury Lane. 

Eglinton initially leans into the suggestion that Nannerl may have been even more talented than her younger sibling: the banging opening number ‘Remember Me’, delivered with thrilling vocal power and charisma by Aimie Atkinson, sets her up as a star in her own right. It’s a bold, unexpected start but the book subsides into something like a conventional biography, albeit with gaping anachronisms, once Jack Chambers is introduced as a teen then adult Mozart (the composer as a child is alternated between Carla Lopez-Corpas and Izzie Monk). 

The first act tells the story of Wolfgang and Nannerl’s manipulation by their tyrannical father (Douglas Hansell) with reasonable efficiency. Jealous rival composer Salieri (fan favourite Jordan Luke Gage) is introduced and Gloria Onitiri makes a potent impression as the Mozart kids’s protective mum. The book falls apart though in act two once it’s established that Nannerl’s musical career has to end when she becomes an adult leaving Wolfgang to pursue the celebrity and acclaim that is probably rightfully hers. Recriminations fly, bridges are built, a love interest is introduced…and Mozart Senior has a massive change of heart in his treatment of his put-upon daughter that seems less to do with psychological or dramatic truth and more about moving the story along. It may be more or less biographically accurate, but as presented here little of it makes much sense. 

Taylor Walker and Markus Olzinger’s production matches Eglinton’s messy, borderline interminable book by being stronger on grandstanding individual moments and striking tableaux than on authentic, powerful drama. The musical numbers mostly hit home quite satisfactorily, but the interconnecting script scenes feel awkward and unfocused, as though the actors have just been left to their own devices. 

Walker also created the jagged, statuesque choreography which works despite being crammed into a limited space: the Other Palace stage is small anyway but Justin Williams’s attractive, evocative set dominated by mirrors, woodwork and a giant ‘M’, occupies so much of it that it feels designed for an altogether larger theatre. Still, the repeated visual motifs of an endlessly revolving upright piano or having the ensemble walking in slo-mo with chairs held upturned over heads, toting parasols, or miming the playing of classical strings, all quite stunningly lit by Ben Jacobs, are surprisingly haunting. Julia Pschedezki’s costumes evoke the 1980s New Romantic era more than 18th century Middle Europe, but have a gossamer elegance. The whole show looks gorgeous, if cramped. 

Musically, Eglinton uses a number of pop styles and borrows cheekily from Mozart’s own work. The songs are catchy but, despite their eclecticism, tend to all merge together by the end of the evening. Arguably the best tunes in the whole thing though are Wolfgang’s and an electronica-infused riff on the Magic Flute overture captures the pulse-quickening radiance of the original. Transposing down the signature section of the Queen of the Night aria to incorporate it into a song for Constanze, Mozart’s wife (Erin Caldwell), to be performed in chest voice, robs the music of much of its majesty and exhilaration though.

The music here may not be operatic in style but it’s still difficult to sing and, on press night, Chambers and Hansell both sounded pretty strained at times. The rest of the singing is fine: the always classy Onitiri has an act one aria about protecting  her child that brings the house down. Chambers convincingly projects Mozart’s anarchic irreverence, while Atkinson and Gage are genuine star presences despite iffy material. 

Ultimately, I’m unsure what the point of Saving Mozart is. The storytelling is incoherent and seldom conveys the brilliant genius of the composer himself while the rehashing of some of his musical themes into a sort of Eurovision-adjacent aural soup just feels reductive. It all feels about as authentic as those boxes of Mozart chocolates you can pick up in Duty Free at Vienna airport. Fans of the stars are likely to be frustrated by how little stage time magnetic performers like Atkinson and Gage actually get, although it’s impossible not to be impressed by the commitment and the vocal chops. Still, there are ear worms aplenty and it’s very pretty to look at.