Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

NBC’s live production of the Tim Rice-Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter Sunday was a fairly daring undertaking, in that hundreds of things (at a minimum) could have gone wrong, and only about a dozen did. Never mind that this isn’t the production I would have staged, or that its partisans (or fans of the individual singers involved) are already wildly overpraising it as “OMG the best thing EVER!!!!” It was a very solid, and very credible effort that took the source material (both the musical and the underlying Biblical story of Christ’s last few days) seriously.

The overall production design made no attempt at mimetic realism, depicting a open performance space surrounded by visible stage scaffolding with the audience on two sides, visible costumed musicians who wove their way in and out of the action, a graffitied wall backdrop, and cameras that looped in and out for closeups in the middle of the action (and so carefully choreographed they never appeared on screen).

Things that work:

Judas (Brandon Victor Dixon) is a stronger singer than Jesus (John Legend), which is a necessity in the score.

Doing the piece as halfway between a live concert and an actual stage production could have failed miserably and doesn’t, and gives the production a palpable energy.

The serious pieces are serious, and the tacky showbiz pieces (like the title track and “King Herod’s Song”) are really, really tacky, and that too is true to the original score. (They represent the fleeting glory of this world.)

Alice Cooper makes a credible Herod.

Sara Bareilles was excellent as Mary Magdalene, who is there to sing ballads and provide a female lead (Because Musicals).

And they did include “Could We Start Again, Please,” the one song in the Broadway production that wasn’t on the original London precast album. (Indeed, I ended up arguing about this with Salena Zito on Twitter.)

They also used the extended version of “Trial Before Pilate” from the Broadway production.

Though I’m not wild about the set or costume design, they use it consistently, putting it a step up on many a Julie Taymor production.

There are two images that fully tap into the lasting power of the underlying story. One, where the sick overwhelm Jesus in the Temple:

That’s an apt visual metaphor: a broken world, desperate for Christ’s salvation.

So too does the final message of a crucified Christ ascending into heaven through a cross-shaped opening in the rear backdrop, backlit by light, make you willing to forgive the previous excesses in staging:

These impressions are proving not so brief. Possibly more later.

But they staged a credible production of a very difficult musical, and for that they deserve a lot of credit.

Tags: Jesus Christ Superstar, Media Watch, NBC

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2018 at 8:58 AM and is filed under Media Watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.