This is the first time in years that I've seen a musical that was sung better than it was acted. I'm no less pleased to report that Jonathan Goldberg's seven-piece offstage orchestra plays Porter's score with infectious verve. DeLuca to sumptuous effect), are all the more exciting for being performed in the lap of the audience. To cram a classic Broadway musical into a 200-seat house requires considerable ingenuity, and I was especially impressed by the choreography of Ilyse Robbins, whose production numbers, especially "Too Darn Hot" and "Always True to You in My Fashion" (the second of which shows off the excellent dancing of Michele A. All the more reason, then, to welcome the Lyric Stage Company of Boston's engaging new production, directed by Spiro Veloudos, whose small scale does nothing to diminish the charms of Porter's play-within-a-play updating of "The Taming of the Shrew." Yet Cole Porter's masterpiece, near-perfect though it is, doesn't get done nearly often enough, and I've no idea why. If there's a better musical than "Kiss Me, Kate," I haven't seen it. This is just the kind of show I have in mind when I assure disbelieving Manhattanites that it's not merely possible but easy to see high-quality theater in every corner of America, flyover country very much included. Sargent and colorfully costumed by Dorothy Marshall Englis) to strut their stuff unimpeded by unnecessary scenery, and all of them do so with aplomb. The handsome but spare set leaves ample room for the 18 actors (who are beautifully lit by Peter E. Louis Rep, which puts on a dozen productions each season, shares with Opera Theatre of St. Barnes and Bill Clarke, his scenic designer, have made immensely resourceful use of the thrust stage of the 763-seat theater that the St. Similarly, Jim Poulos plays Mozart not as the foul-mouthed idiot savant of the film but as a likable lightweight in whose real-life existence it is no great strain to believe. Barnes's staging, which emphasizes the comic aspect of "Amadeus" without lapsing into gross caricature. He plays Salieri as a grotesque, grim-faced clown, an interpretation very much in accord with Mr. To impersonate so tortured a soul is a daunting task, but Andrew Long, who was terrific as Antony in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of "Antony and Cleopatra" that I saw in Washington last summer, is up to the job. In the stage version, by contrast, the spotlight never moves away from Salieri, an ambitious but modestly talented composer who is driven to the brink of madness by the inexplicable fact that supreme genius and juvenile vulgarity exist side by side in Mozart, his hated competitor: "It seemed to me that I had heard the voice of God-and that it issued from a creature whose own voice I had also heard-and that it was the voice of an obscene child!"
Forman's film, an opulently designed costume piece that is great fun to watch but lacks the expressionistic intensity of the original play. Nowadays, of course, most people know "Amadeus" from Mr. Lyric Stage Company of Boston, YMCA Building, 140 Clarendon St., Boston ($29-$54), 61, closes Oct. Browning Mainstage, Loretto-Hilton Center, 130 Edgar Rd., Webster Groves, Mo.