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[The Times, Trenton, NJ, USA, Arts/Leisure Section, Sunday, December 19, 1999]

Making Salieri seethe

By Matt Wolf, Associated Press

--Harefield, England - David Suchet, dressed for work as the brainy Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, is turning his mind to the mysteries of God and Mozart. In his imminent Broadway debut, Suchet aims to make playwright Peter Shaffer's envy-ridden, murderous Salieri seethe anew.

"Its a first for me, and Salieri has provided enormous challenge, "says Suchet, 53, talking on a location shoot for the second of two upcoming Poirot adventures. (The first of those films, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," will air Feb. 13 in the United States on the A&E Network, with the second, "Lord Edgware Dies," to follow later.)

But before Suchet returns after a five-year absence to the Agatha Christie creation for which the actor remains best-known worldwide, he must tread where such illustrious colleagues as Paul Scofield, Ian McKellen and Frank Finlay have gone before. Now, it is Suchet's turn to play the obsessive, self-described "mediocrity," Antonio Salieri, who -- in Shaffer's speculative thesis -- may have poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus mozart, one of our closing millennium's defining musical geniuses.

With the young Welsh actor Michael Sheen repeating his West End performance as the braying, wild-eyed Mozart, the revival of "Amadeus" opened Dec. 15 at the Music Box Theatre. This is an American remounting of a production that began in London in October 1998, before traveling to Los Angeles this fall.

Shaffer's play premiered at London's National Theatre in 1979, with Scofield and Simon Callow as Salieri and Mozart. Its Broadway debut the following year starred McKellen and Tim Curry, while film actors F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce inherited the roles in Milos Forman's 1984 Academy Award-winning movie.

Some actors balk at watching others inhabit roles that they may one day play. Not Suchet. "I've seen everybody do it," grins Suchet, speaking in his trailer during a break in filming. "My interpretation is different to all of them." In what respect? As Suchet sees it, he -- more than any of his predecessors -- lets the audience in.

The play, says Suchet, "exists mainly between actor and audience; its about not keeping them at bay. Salieri invites you into his room for you to listen to his confession. It is personal, and therefore the whole relationship between him and the audience is to get you to understand, to laugh, to like him." There's an unseen character, too, says Suchet, whose presence looms largest of all. That is none other than God, who blessed Mozart with celestial talent while cursing Salieri with the knowledge that he is in fact a second rate hack.

Salieri, says the actor, "is a pretty repressed type of human being. In court, he's trying to be more courtly than everybody else; he's always holding it in." It follows, then, that "his emotional outpouring is to God, not to the court, not to Mozart," says Suchet. For all its sublimations, the part is far more extrovert, even flamboyant, than Poirot, the thin-lipped Belgian whom Suchet has become this particular lunchtime in a morning waistcoat, bow tie, and a narrow black mustache that obscures his top lip. "I look a real idiot," the actor says.

Suchet played Chief Inspector Japp, one of Poirot's retinue, in a 1985 American TV film, "Thirteen for Dinner," that starred Peter Ustinov as the portly detective. "That was my second worst performance," says Suchet. His worst? In his view, [it was] "The Iron Eagle," a 1986 slice of cinematic jingoism set mostly in the Middle East. In 1988, he stepped into Ustinov's shoes, filming the first of what became an annual 20-week stint as Poirot up until 1994, with a year off along the way to star in the David Mamet play, "Oleanna." The TV work allows for a different Suchet from the deep-voiced Salieri, who burns with a jealousy that runs deep and dark. 

"My voice as Poirot is slightly high because he's all brain," says Suchet. "He's up here in the head, a walking brain." And unlike his portrayal of Salieri, whose conspiratorial smile makes him a villain you love to hate, as Poirot, the actor can't smile widely or yell and scream because his mustache would pop off. 

Suchet delights in the success of the "Poirot" franchise, citing an audience over time of 530 million viewers -- a number that could obviously never be matched in the theatre. But the theatre, which he does more of than anything else, has fed his greatest achievements; Timon of Athens and Iago, the latter opposite Ben Kinglsey's Othello; the slow-festering John in "Oleanna"; the simmering academic George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

And then there's Salieri, which finds Suchet and Sheila Ferris, his wife of 23 years, greeting the millennium in Manhattan, well away from their northwest London home. (The couple have two children, ages 18 and 16.)

"I have never done a play in 30 years where ... there was not a standing ovation, and we're in England," says Suchet, thinking back on his production's London run at the Old Vic.

What, then, of Broadway? If the same response happens, says Suchet, "Great." And if it doesn't? "It will still be great," he says.

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