Amadeus, York Theatre Royal, until August 9.

Italian composer Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) wrote more than 40 operas, four oratorios and church music aplenty; he taught Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt and was the composer and conductor to the Viennese court.

Yet his music is forgotten, and instead he is known only for his hostility towards young upstart and court jester Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Viennese whirl who drove him to destruction. Why, even Peter Shaffer's play is called Amadeus rather than Salieri, to taunt him even more.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of Music dismisses the legend that Salieri poisoned Mozart - the stuff of Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart And Salieri - but the old, gibbering, cream cake-guzzling Salieri (Malcolm Rennie) we encounter at the start of Shaffer's tragi-comic drama is adamant he was to blame for Mozart's death. The Graham Norton-camp court gossips, in their green wigs, merely pronounce: "I don't believe it".

Salieri's powder blue shoes poke out from beneath his crumpled cloak, a vestige of his better times but all around him are crimson-red drapes: at once lavish yet suggestive of a personal hell too (in a superlative set design by Steven Yull).

Salieri, the narrator with the dyspeptic humour of Shakespeare's Richard III, talks of blazing like a comet across Europe, but the comet is Mozart (Daniel Hart). He enters playing cat and mouse, his scatalogical language being even more colourful than his gaudy court attire, all orange and lavender, raspberry and cream and bouffant wigs.

Shaffer's presentation of Mozart as an eternally boyish prankster robs his decline and pauper's grave demise of gravitas and tragedy, and undermines his rebellious barrier-breaking and artistic brio too, making Hart's livewire role the most difficult to play.

Yet, Amadeus is not so much a study of genius and greatness but of those who trail jealously in its wake: mediocre men such as arch rival Salieri, Shakespeare's Iago and green-eyed bass players. Here is where the playwright excels, and Tim Luscombe's grandiose yet still intensely intimate production with its cast of 23 has a magnificent central performance to maximise this theme.

Malcolm Rennie's corrosive Salieri draws you in all the more as he repels you, and while all around him the Viennese court and Adam Astill's Emperor Joseph II are conducting themselves like an episode of Blackadder, he brilliantly conveys that struggle we all have to be content with our lot.

Mozart's music is the cream in this rich cake, music to all but Salieri's ears.

Amadeus, York Theatre Royal, until August 9.

Updated: 11:47 Wednesday, July 23, 2003