Continuing their “20th Anniversary Season of Favorites” as voted upon by their subscribers, Fountain Hills Community Theatre has mounted Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, one of the acclaimed shows in Peter J. Hill’s performance arsenal. I’m not sure how many times he’s performed the role of Antonio Salieri, though I’m pretty sure there was one at Stagebrush, and obviously a previous production for FHCT. Salieri is a role tailored for Hill’s specific talents: big and splashy, full of emoting and audience interaction. It’s easy to see why he received acclaim in its prior incarnations. With its strong central performance and its impressively showy design elements, it’s easy to ignore the minor niggling problems with the show, even when one of those minor niggles are some of the choices of director Noël Irick in terms of Terry Gadaire as the show’s titled character.

Of course, Wolfgang is meant to be played over-the-top. One of the central joys of Schaffer’s work is watching a venerable figure such as Mozart being reduced to a scatological, infantile brat. And just as Salieri fits Hill’s talents, Gadaire’s love of broad comedy seems a natural fit for Mozart. The thing to balance this with, though, is the length of the play; clocking in at approximately two hours and 45 minutes, that much Gadaire, screeching with glee over his character’s childish pranks, dancing about the stage as a prodigal prodigy, and going through Mozart’s death throes with a Camille-like resonance, is about a half hour more than an audience’s faculties could be expected to stand. A little reigning in on Irick’s part might have avoided the headache I experienced on the long ride home. Sometimes too much of a good thing leads to gluttony.

But Irick does keep the show moving briskly and utilizing Steve McGillivray’s well-appointed and ingenious set. The many interactions between Hill and Gadaire and Gadaire and Debbie Lindner as Mozart’s wife Costanze are brimming with sight gags and sly sidelong looks. Lindner is quite effective in believably presenting her character’s arc from giggling ninny to tragic spouse.

Even Richard Wells has found his stride as the lame-brained Joseph II of Austria by making his normally hesitant acting style and odd vocal patter work well for this character. The three courtiers Count Von Strack (Scott Connelly), Count Rosenberg (Dennis Kodimer) and Baron Van Swieten (Chip Wood) are played in a lower-keyed, vocally soft presentational style that does not match the intensity of the three leads, but also does not threaten to unbalance the production.

The other design elements deserve notice, such as Hill’s expressive lighting, Patricia Tonzi’s impressively period costumes, and especially Jesse Berger’s extensive and well-integrated sound design.