In Peter Shaffer’s universe, the only thing worse than being the worst at your craft is being utterly average, having just enough talent to recognize that your talent is trivial. Eighteenth-century Italian composer Antonio Salieri is a prisoner of such mediocrity in Amadeus, the fictionalized historical drama that captured eight Tony Awards in 1981, including Best Play, Best Director for Peter Hall, and Best Actor for Ian McKellen. Now the story of jealousy and deception takes the student-produced stage at Harvard-Radcliffe in various shades of its own mediocrity.

The play opens with a flurry of rumors and speculation. Did Salieri murder Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Why would he confess, 32 years later? Then Salieri (Tom Price), crippled and destitute and on the last stanza of life, narrates the two-hour-plus flashback detailing his strange compact with God. Salieri vows a life of virtue if God will grant him fame as a composer. At first the partnership works out fine: Salieri labors feverishly and earns the position of court composer in the Vienna of Emperor Joseph II. But then God’s voice finds a new conduit to the human world.

Enter the crass child prodigy Mozart, here played by David Skeist with such sympathy as to make his portrait of the obscene child more complex than Shaffer’s crude caricature. Inside his repugnant body, Mozart harbors a divine talent: he can fully orchestrate music in his mind ( " The rest’s just scribbling " ). Envious of Mozart’s prowess, Salieri is in a position to make or break Mozart’s reputation at the Viennese court. He uses his influence to ruin God’s preferred creature, but when he proposes to seduce Mozart’s wife, Constanze Weber (Kate Agresta), God strikes back, insulting Salieri with the fame he desires but for work he knows to be worthless.

The irony of Shaffer’s Salieri, of course, is that the portrayal of mediocrity requires a virtuoso actor. Salieri’s monologues last for pages and include passages in Italian, and once he greets the audience with " Vi saluto! " , in the opening minutes, the character never leaves the spotlight. Tom Price does a fair job, but the part seems like work. Price’s smooth baritone voice sets up an appropriately calculating demeanor for Salieri, yet his physical and mental transformations are cursory. Both he and Shaffer are at their best when they’re drunk on the words that describe Mozart’s art and convince us all of the sanctity of music.

This Amadeus feeds off the comedic performance of Skeist, whose quick baby talk and irreverent attitude paint a kinetic if inaccurate picture of the boy composer. Kevin Meyers as Emperor Joseph is also good for surefire laughs with his refrain " Well, there it is, " which he uses to eradicate awkward silences in conversation. Meyers’s straight-up American accent and attitude are a slight distraction but effective in energizing his fellow cast members.

Ken Herrera’s production has the creaks of a student performance. The classical score that accompanies most scenes suffers from the sort of rough transitions that suggest an impatient radio listener changing stations. The piano, which is downstage right, produces sound from upstage left. Some actors lapse in and out of character, grinning at their own jokes, while the audience fades in and out of the world of the play in synch with the flow of chatter from the control booth.

Herrera does get some interesting results from double- and triple-casting most of his actors (this production has just seven performers as opposed to the standard 30). As well as playing Emperor Joseph, Salieri’s employer (and his unwitting accomplice in the destruction of Mozart), Meyers also takes the part of Salieri’s servant. And Brendon DeMay portrays a wonderfully stubborn Baron van Swieten, a respected Mason who chastises Mozart for revealing the clan’s rituals in one of his operas, then returns as a character who’s a blabber himself. Still, I wonder whether the verdict of the court wouldn’t feel more consequential if the stage had a few extra counts and barons whispering in the corners.

And what of the court’s decision? Do we care whether some overdressed Austrian philistines thought Mozart a " good " composer? According to Salieri, " Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art. " Herrera’s troupe manages to keep the intrigue burning throughout this demanding drama, but it could benefit from a little extra coal in the theatrical furnace.