Something encouraging happens after a performance of director Des McAnuff’s Jesus Christ Superstar. People, young and old, and some not too old, enthusiastically discuss both the musical and its production. They do so in the Avon’s lobby, in the street, and in cafes around Stratford. “He is the best Judas I’ve seen and I’ve seen lots,” says a young lady waiting near stage door. Minutes before, at the end of the performance, the audience has erupted into standing applause.
Why? Because it is an overwhelming show that does consume the watcher, a show thoroughly splendid in cast, direction, design, and lighting. The show is rumoured to be Broadway bound after a good stint at La Jolla and that is where it belongs. Meanwhile, people in the audience might as a result be encouraged to see more live theatre, maybe even Chekhov or Sheridan. And as much as I am inevitably annoyed by Lloyd Webber-Rice creations, I am glad I saw this spectacular production.
Des McAnuff orchestrates bodies in space and they explode in electrical currents, all frantic and boldly energetic, as they crisscross the stage, climb bleachers, and scale columns into the stratosphere. He is a master of devices, both human and inanimate, and we in the audience are out of breath keeping up with him. He blows you away and so does his cast when its potent physical enthusiasm is given outlet in bursts of movement and dynamic groupings of bodies.
The impact is irresistible, even as heretics to the church of Lloyd Webber, like yours truly, resist. I did succumb to one singer, I must admit, who among the moneychangers was most adept at etching on the air with her ass. Moreover, Robert Brill’s overwhelming set includes eternally high columns, a running electric marquee that gives day by day headlines like “Six days until Passover,” and an elevated U shaped area nine feet above the main stage for horizontal variety. As for effects, Lloyd Webber likes among other devices to drop things from the ceiling: in Phantom it is a chandelier, here it is Jesus Christ.
The cast with Josh Young as Judas, Chilina Kennedy as Mary Magdalene, Paul Nolan as Jesus and Brent Carver displaying his subtle acting chops as Pontius Pilate are most dynamic and impressive in giving as much human dimension as the Lloyd Webber-Rice idiom allows. Both Judas and Jesus constantly impress with their ease at doing full throttle falsetto and upper register gymnastics. Delightful moments occur throughout, like Bruce Dow’s delicious showstopper that has Herod take on the “King of the Jews”.
Judas and Mary Magdalene effectively negotiate complex inner conflict and all the singers, especially the bass, delight us with surprising variety in textures and tones or ease in vocal high jumps. Jesus, poor Saviour, is given limited choices—either be starched and holy most of the time or angry when challenged – but gradually Paul Nolan is permitted to give Jesus compelling substance. When he is allowed to be more than a statue, this Jesus is disturbingly intense.
Before curtain, Des McAnuff announces the following: “If you are thinking of unwrapping a hard candy or lozenge, feel free to do so, because the score will drown you out.” And that’s my first problem with Jesus Christ Superstar, that it’s a continuum of loudness without much variety and with bass and drum pounding away monotonously in four/four. The singers bellow away in upper registers as a way to signify meaning and intensity, but we see them not as having feeling but yelling about feeling at one another.
With this foundation of faux rock, we don’t experience what feels like real people but people saying the right thing, the trendy thing, to music that is usually unimaginative and functional and hiding out in volume. We don’t really know who these characters are because they are reduced to meaningful glances and obvious ironies. Lines like “It doesn’t help if you’re inconsistent” that would be funny when said tongue in cheek are played straight and light years away from Cole Porter’s wit. The double meaning of Christ in “Christ, you deserve it” is clever, but one wonders if Andrew Rice knew it was.
Yes, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” is effectively simple and melodic and some lines like Mary’s “Let the world turn without you tonight” are inspired, but Jesus according Lloyd-Webber/Rice is made into rigidity, supposedly holy but pointless, and I start to laugh because he simply looks stoned. And unkind phrases fill my mind -Much ado about no one; I Don’t Know Why to Love Him; Jesus Kitsch Superstar- and I begin to imagine that this pair has a photo of Sonny Bono on their wall and that, if they thought of resurrection today, it would be Michael Bolton they would have in mind.