Full disclosure: my history with Jesus Christ Superstar is pretty thin. The first time I remember experiencing it was after my wife and I got married, and she got a DVD of the 1973 film version.[fn1]
The second time was this last Easter on NBC.
The third time was Saturday at Chicago’s Lyric Opera. (Spoiler alert: if you’re in or near Chicago, or will be on or before May 20, get tickets to this show. Right now.)
For the last six years or so, the Lyric Opera has closed its season with a Broadway musical. This year, in a departure from the traditionally America, traditionally traditional, musicals, they went with Jesus Christ Superstar. And what they delivered is mind-blowingly good.
This version is an expansion of director Tim Sheader’s successful London revival. And there are a handful of things that make this version so impactful.
First and foremost are the actors.[fn2] Judas’s voice soars and growls, as his agony at the role he can’t escape grows. This Mary Magdalene enters calming the chaos around her. This Pilate may be the most relatable, dressed in black leather but clearly distressed at what he’s going to do. And Caiaphas. In other recordings, his bass vocals are impressive. Here, his basso profundo reverberates in the audience’s chests and in their souls.
And Jesus. For most of the performance, he’s a secondary character in his eponymous play. His songs are, if not bland, at least unmemorable.
Until the moneychangers in the temple. And then his voice explodes, with a melodic scream that would make Jimmy Page Robert Plant [author’s note: oops] proud (and, I suspect, jealous). And the actor manages to capture the pain and the hurt and the loneliness that scripture suggests Jesus felt, but that has largely been sterilized by decades of reading the idea of the gospel texts.
Look, this is Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. It’s young Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The music and lyrics are fine. But the story they’re adopting is divine, and the performances in this version are transcendent, raising even the most mundane features of the musical to the glorious.
And it’s not just the actors: Sheader sluffs off any attempt at creating connective tissue. Jesus Christ Superstar was, in the first instance, a concept album, not a play. And this version is performatively musical. The stage has a stage on it. The actors sing into classic hand-held microphones. There’s a guitar onstage the whole time, and sometimes Jesus plays it as he sings. That’s not to say there isn’t acting and dancing—there is, and it’s great. But it’s always within the context of a rock concert.
And speaking of: the music. There’s a six-piece rock band (apparently filled with Chicago luminaries) above the stage. But also, the Lyric Opera’s 31-piece orchestra behind the stage. And the chorus is doubled, with not just Broadway singers, but also the Lyric Opera’s chorus. All of those musicians, all of that talent, make for a wall of sound. A glorious, heavenly wall of sound. The sound can be funky—the play starts, basically, with a perfect recreation of the analogue synthesizer glissandos that start the album.[fn3] It can be chaotic and disorienting: the dissonance during the crucifixion is magnified manifold with a chorus and an orchestra this loud. It can be surprising: there was a perfect Brecker-esque saxophone solo that came out of nowhere, then disappeared, never to be heard again.
And Herod. Oh Herod.
Note that the play is appropriately bloody. Jesus’s agony, his pain, is earned. But, at the same time, the play isn’t lovingly focused on the agony. While the pain is palpable, while the blood is makeuped on, none of it is gratuitous or unnecessary. Note, too, that it’s not like what you’ve seen before. It’s not campy, it’s not a throwback, it’s not at all hippy. It is, however, diverse and young and it takes its source material seriously. And you should definitely see it.
But wait! you might be saying. Haven’t church leaders spoken against Jesus Christ Superstar?
Yes, it turns out, though I didn’t know that until I Facebooked it. See, I wasn’t quite born when the album first came out, and by the time I was old enough to be aware of church culture, the show had (temporarily) faded from the public consciousness.[fn4] Then, Sunday night, my oldest daughter was on lds.org and found several statements criticizing Jesus Christ Superstar, to her utter confusion.
And I share that confusion, frankly. Without looking at the specific criticisms (which seem to be more general anti-hippy and anti-rock music stuff than specific criticisms of the album), I suspect it was discomfort at using a vulgar and eminently secular medium (that is, rock music) to address a sacred story.
And that’s part of the greatness. Seeing the Passion from a different perspective, with characters and words we’re not used to, allows us to cut through what we think we’re familiar with. It forces us to look at the story of the last week of Jesus’ life differently, and catch angles and details that we didn’t think about before. Like great art (and this performance was absolutely great art), it allows us to transcend ourselves. And that’s inspiring.
(And for those of you who would love to see it, but aren’t going to make it to Chicago in the next two weeks, in a year, this particular version is going on tour. It won’t be quite the same—they won’t, I suspect, be taking the Lyric’s chorus or orchestra. Even still, though, I wouldn’t miss it if it came to a town near you.)
[fn1] I don’t remember exactly when it was, but since we lived in New York at the time, it must have been in the first decade of the 2000s.
[fn2] Note that I’m using their characters’ names, mostly because I’m too lazy to pull out my program and find out the actors’ names. And also because you probably wouldn’t recognize the names—there are no star names in this performance, and it’s not the weaker for that.
[fn3] Yes, I know I didn’t have any experience with it. But when we got home Saturday night, we listened to the soundtrack from the 1973 movie. Then Sunday, we listened to the original album.
[fn4] The Andrew Lloyd Webber of my childhood was probably Cats. I never saw it, but remember being mystified by ads for it during Saturday morning cartoons. In middle school, the world was obsessed with the organ line from Phantom of the Opera. And when my high school band took a trip to Vegas, we saw Starlight Express.