Mozart and Salieri comes to Chicago audiences with an impressive pedigree. It was penned by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, and its spare verse format was translated into English by Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson (marking the only time in Nabokov▓s career he ever collaborated with another author). The play also inspired the Oscar-winning movie Amadeus. Its themes deal with no lesser topics than immortality, power, and the creative process. It raises provocative questions, such as why seemingly effortless creativity can trump hard work and craftsmanship. It hints at murderous envy.

Pushkin▓s imaginative take on the final hours of Amadeus Mozart▓s young life in the presence of his paradoxical friend and foe, Antonio Salieri, has all the earmarks of great theater: its story of artistic jealousy is engaging, and its plot, about how a requiem Mozart has written was commissioned by a dark and mysterious stranger, is thought provoking and mysterious.

With all this going for it, it▓s a shame that T.U.T.A. (The Utopian Theatre Asylum), under the direction of Zelijko Djukic, has so many missteps that mar this potentially gripping and ethereal piece. First, the piece is short (10 pages or so) and the production shows all the signs of desperation to stretch it out to feature-length. Speeches are chopped up and interrupted with odd bits of stage business, such as the appearance of a superfluous, black-dressed figure (Matthew van Colton), who silently tromps around in platform, Frankenstein-style boots that fit neither the time period nor the rest of the production. Djukic has employed the efforts of a classical guitarist to add a little music. The plucking power of Goran Ivanovic is pleasant enough, but overused. The intermezzo between acts one and two is drawn on far too long, especially when the audience is held captive in their seats. Second, the performances of the two principals, Kirk Anderson as Salieri and Bob Kulhan! as Mozart, are often too mannered to allow us to really enter the charged situation Pushkin has set up. The pair never rise above actors trying to impress, rather than the historical figures they should be portraying. And last, the weirdest choice of all comes in the second act, when the director has decided to employ a pool table, complete with cue sticks and balls, in the climactic dinner scene between the two musicians. Such odd choices for the sake of being odd lift the audience right out of the world we should be immersed in. The only thing that does work is the falling snow at the end of the piece, after Mozart has died from the poison Salieri administered (and even this is flawed, because the contraption that drops the snow creaked inelegantly).

Mozart and Salieri is a distinctive piece of writing. It▓s too bad that the production didn▓t aspire to the level of its material.