Amadeus – Folger Shakespeare Theater
“The high acting standard extends to the other major roles, particularly Samuel Adams’s juvenile-genius Mozart… Adams, in the tradition of such previous owners of the role as Tim Curry and Tom Hulce, captures the character’s combination of innocence and arrogance. That duality is reflected giddily in the early scene in which he sits at a keyboard and humiliates Salieri with a heavenly variation on the prosaic march the older maestro has written in his honor. Salieri is all labored contrivance; Mozart exuberant effortlessness.” – Peter Marks, Washington Post
“Samuel Adams portrays Mozart as a frenetic rocket; an impulsive, perhaps bipolar, creative man looking to what could be, not what was. Adams’s Mozart is a younger man with enormous talents who wants to end the absolute power of the elites…on what music is to be made and heard. But, getting in way of his success are his quirky giddy ways, his scatological language, his need for the constant high of attention, and his unmooring when those who have been his anchors are no longer available to help save him. Adams is in constant physical movement with a face that is ablaze with transparency, and his cocksure delivery of dialogue like this: ‘It’s the best opera yet written. That’s what it is. And only I could have done it. No one else living!’” – DC Metro Theater Arts
“Samuel Adams brings all the vulgarity and innocence of Mozart to life. His Mozart is meant to show a stark contrast to the middle-aged and – dare I say it? – mediocre Salieri. Adams finds the likable heart beneath the spoiled prodigy while not pulling back on his silly nature. The unfiltered Amadeus and the calculating Salieri become the bitterest of enemies, according to Salieri, and the rivalry is epic indeed. Thanks to Peakes and Adams, both these performances are reason enough to get your tickets as to what will surely be a hot ticket this season.” – Maryland Theater Guide
“It would be all too easy, in the role of Mozart, to be overcome by the memory of giddy renditions by Tim Curry on stage and Tom Hulce in Milos Forman’s acclaimed 1984 film. Samuel Adams, fortunately, has the fortitude and the talent to find his own way in the role. He delivers the part’s signature giddy giggles in his own thoughtfully calibrated measure. But it’s in the vulnerable and despondent moments that he really inhabits the part. As husband, as a Mason, as court politician, he is hopeless. Only in sacrificing himself to his bipolar muse, which dictates intoxicating operatic love quartets one moment and a chilling requiem the next, does the one-time delinquent toast of Europe still rule the world.” – DC Theater Scene
“As his unwitting nemesis, the young and giddy Mozart, Samuel Adams’s portrayal is intriguing and quite memorable with its blend of arrogance, naiveté, and a disarming, hyena-like laugh.” – Metro Weekly
“Samuel Adams’s Mozart provides a perfect counterpoint, bobbing around the stage in his Easter egg-colored wigs. Adams doesn’t shy from the character’s mildly repellent absurdity (middle schoolers don’t make this many poop jokes), nor does he reach to find likability in the composer’s genius, both to the audience’s benefit.” – Brightest Young Things
“Samuel Adams strikes a balance in the role of Mozart, with his high-pitched laugh and his punk-style periwigs (colored to match some truly spectacular outfits, created by Mariah Anzaldo Hale). Adams shows us how Mozart’s childish view of the world can be amusing, but at times a disaster; Shaffer provides the young man with just enough jealousy and vitriol to show that he was actually his own worst enemy, and he holds out the possibility that Mozart’s death was in some ways self- inflicted.” –Broadway World
“Along with Clifford’s outstanding direction, he has chosen wisely the cast performing the gifted dialogue and physical movements of this piece. Award- winning Ian Merrill Peakes as Antonio Salieri and Samuel Adams as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are transcendent in their performances. Both have the ability to wrap the audience in a blanket of understanding as to why they are at this crossroads in their lives, and with each line of dialogue, they allow the spectator to be lost in a memorizing world of poetry and understanding to just who Salieri and Mozart are.” – Plays To See
“Perfectly parallel to Peakes’s menacing antics as Salieri, is Adams’s charming, yet infantile and vulgar disposition of Mozart. Personifying Mozart is a task Adams achieves with each breath. His occasionally nervous but often obnoxious shrill of a laugh and multi-color hair is both humorous and infectious…Even though Adams prances and crawls onstage, spewing uncouth verbiage, he maintains an air of innocence that allows his unceasing advancements in his artistry.” -District Fray
“For a play like Amadeus to work, it’s vital to have a strong and talented actor portraying Mozart. That requirement is met through the acting prowess of Samuel Adams, who seems to wholeheartedly embrace Mozart’s social faux pas moments with high-pitched laughter, obscene language, and freedom of movement when he glides into a room. To be clear, however, Adams never verges on caricature, and he pulls back adroitly when necessary to accentuate the quieter moments.” – BlogCritics.org
“Samuel Adams’ impish Mozart is fresher in every sense. All that compositional supercomputing power is housed inside the body of a 26-year-old with the maturity of a 13-year-old, and Adams communicates that, his hiccup-like laugh functioning as a sort of involuntary exuberance valve.” – Washington City Paper
Henry V – Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
“Adams does an extraordinary job of balancing the dichotomy between solider who wishes to win and human being who wishes to empathize and share compassion among his fellow man. We even get a ridiculous series of goofy love- like emotions that are delivered with lighthearted humor from Adams, which serve in sharp juxtaposition to some of the heavier scenes through which he navigates the character. It’s the rousing, confident St. Crispin speech— “we happy few”— that Adams delivers, which would readily have the audience willing to follow him once more into the breech.” – Theater Bloom
“In Samuel Adams as King Henry, [we find] an articulate and presentable young man to make the case of Henry as hero. Other choices follow from that choice; this Henry is presented in a way that makes him seem genuinely to believe in the justice of his cause. He likewise seems, however implausibly, to be truly smitten with the French princess. His concern for his troops is presented as unfeigned. He is the model young monarch.” – Broadway World
LEOPOLDSTADT – Shakespeare THEATRE Company
“Rounding out the enormously talented cast were…Samuel Adams (Fritz, Percy). All wove together throughout to create an incredibly arresting portrayal of history’s impact on culture, family, and the future, challenging us all to consider what it means to survive and remember.” –DC Theater Arts
“Wonderful acting by Nacer and Brenda Meaney as his beautiful and yet insecure wife Gretl, as well as from Samuel Adams as the charmingly repulsive Fritz (and later as the heroic and sympathetic Percy Chamberlain) help us keep track of the shifting relationships.” –Stage & Cinema
“Samuel Adams is also memorable in a dual role as egotistical and shrewd Officer Fritz and English journalist Percy.” – Sleepless Critic
“Stoppard specialist and D.C. native Carey Perloff steers the luxuriously upholstered staging, a co-production with Boston’s the Huntington, where it played earlier this year. It’s an assured reading, simultaneously intimate and epic, even with a cast scaled down to a more manageable 20-something…and at moments it takes on the heft of an almost holy picture…This “Leopoldstadt” makes itself shatteringly relevant here and now, in the battered, beating heart of another storied empire — one that, as Stoppard unmistakably suggests, could likewise go either way.” – Washington Post
Samuel Adams 