SOURCE: A review of Amadeus, in Drama: The Quarterly Theatre Review, No. 135, January, 1980, pp. 48-9.

In the following evaluation of the London production, Taylor observes that Amadeus is a "bit stuffy and old-fashioned, a bit determined to be regarded at all costs as philosophical, " but concedes that it succeeds on stage.

[Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the Olivier] is a puzzlement. There are big things obviously wrong with it. It takes for ever to get started, as though Shaffer has thought of three or four possible openings and then used all of them. It tends, as is Shaffer's way in his loftier pieces—Equus, The Royal Hunt of the Sun—to over-verbalise everything, so that we seldom get a chance to feel his subject-matter in our bones because he is so busy telling us what we ought to be feeling (as if Shakespeare, instead of creating lago, had written...