Jesus Christ Superstar

To stage Jesus Christ Superstar, I've long been convinced, is to set yourself up to fail. I'm not just being crabby, here; I love the piece very much. But it was not conceived for the stage in the first place, so putting it on one tends not to work very well. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice initially hoped to develop it for the West End, but after every theater producer laughed the young men out of their office for the very idea of rock-operafying the days leading up to Jesus's crucifixion, Superstar was instead composed and released in 1970 as a remarkably popular concept album. The studio setting arguably contributed to the rock opera's worldwide success: recording happened over many weeks, so vocalists could take breaks whenever they needed to rest their shredded vocal cords; flaws detected in playbacks could be nipped and spliced or recorded anew. And unlike West End producers, executives at Decca--flush from the recent success of the Who's Tommy, which had almost singlehandedly revived the dying label--were all too happy to market the daylights out of the finished product. To that end, the Murray Head recording of "Superstar" was released a full year before the album was; the BBC teaser, in which Head wanders earnestly around some church ruins while sporting a mullet and a cloth choker, is awesome. 

The album version of Jesus Christ Superstar went platinum in the US, and sold incredibly well in many European and South American countries. Its success--compounded by reports of numerous amateur stage and concert versions taking place across the US--finally convinced theater producers that a rock opera about Jesus's last days wasn't such a stupid idea after all. But among the many problems people encountered when trying to launch one: fans had already bonded deeply with the album and expected live versions to sound just like it; voices straining through full productions multiple times a week couldn't hold a candle to ones that could shriek for an hour and then rest for a few days, probably at a spa paid for by Decca; it's more interesting to listen to people thinking about things than it is to watch them wander in circles, however purposefully, scratching their chins or wringing their hands as they wonder "what then to do about Jesus of Nazareth." Directors have pulled out all kinds of stops to counter what is ultimately a pretty stagnant show: tiered, obstacle course-like sets; groovy laser Floyd-inspired lighting; gaudy makeup, day-glo costumes, an insect-inspired subtext. And yet I've never seen or studied a stage production of Superstar that has managed to triumph over a lack of dramatic build. 

James Dimmock

A "live in concert" televised event, however, is a different story, especially when it's been staged in a venue the size of an airplane hangar (an armory, actually, which is close) before an audience that sounds like it's having a collective orgasm for two-and-a-half hours. The spectators helped galvanize a production that drew almost immediately from a frequently overlooked ingredient that makes the sound recording as powerful as it is: its instrumentals. The son of a composer and organist (dad) and a violinist and pianist (mom), Lloyd Webber knows way more about music than his haters like to acknowledge; of all his pieces, Superstar is paced particularly beautifully. Beneath and between the voices, the score builds from those first distinctive licks on electric guitar into what eventually becomes deeply satisfying epic Wagnerian hugeness. This production not only took note of that fact, but milked it: following the first sweeping shots of Brooklyn, the armory exterior, and the audience of superfreaks within, cameras lingered lovingly on the large, multiply tiered, beautifully diverse orchestra, and then on four of its string players, who jammed together onstage in a tight circle before ushering in the cast. Yay, huge orchestra! You rocked!!

The production continued to deliver throughout, which is not to say that it didn't have its problems. There will always be a pacing issue with Superstar due to its tendency to dwell on chatty ruminations; the frequent commercial breaks sucked a little of the energy, too. But for the most part, jump-cuts, whizzing cameras, closeups, oceans of glitter, and a big giant cross that floats into an even bigger cross before being swallowed up in a beacon of light kept the action moving, even when the audience needed to pause to keep from hyperventilating. The sharp, active choreography by the exceptionally talented Camille A. Brown helped a hell of a lot, too; I can't say I've ever seen a Superstar with more dance than this one had, and it turns out that the stage production was crying out for it all along. Who knew? Not me.

People are already weighing in on the actors' interpretations, so here's what I think: they were all fine, though some certainly strayed from the original recording in ways that took some getting used to. The most noticable in this case was John Legend's Jesus. Whatever, the man's not a heavy metal screamer, and while I missed the dramatic, shouting-Jesus moments that occur through the piece, Legend's not nearly as petulant or whiny as Ian Gillan's Jesus was. This was a fair trade for me, especially since Jesus is not really the most interesting character in Lloyd Webber and Rice's retelling, anyway. As the second-least interesting character, Sara Bareilles's Mary was terrific, especially with her sweet and plaintive "Could We Start Again, Please?"

I have enough riding on Alice Cooper's aura that I could overlook the fact that he can barely move at this point in what has been an exceedingly excessive life (while not as iconic as JCS, Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies is a brilliant concept album from the 1970s that is a favorite of mine, too). The supporting cast was beautiful, committed, terrific sounding, and diverse enough to remind anyone who cared to watch that the very point of world religions is that they are followed by lots of different people everywhere, and not just blonde Caucasians in the American midwest and south. And while I suspect it didn't enter into consideration, since it kind of never does, the multicultural ensemble helped negate the not-so-subtle implication that one particular group of people (mine, in fact!) killed Jesus; if you view this piece as inherently anti-Semitic, this production just might make you feel a little less alienated from it, though I can't promise you anything. Anyway, for what it's worth, I appreciated Norm Lewis and Jin Ha's chilly, Matrix-like takes on Caiaphas and Annas.

And, like everyone else, I was thrilled by Brandon Victor Dixon's intense, muscular Judas. Not afraid to experiment vocally while doing a fair amount of scenery-chewing in a role that pretty much requires it, Dixon owned the piece. He has long been a dedicated Broadway performer; I hope this thrillingly successful live-tv event makes him a household name. Christ, he deserves it.