THEATRE REVIEW: Jesus Christ Superstar

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar caused a sensation when it debuted more than four decades ago – first as a concept album, then as a live rock opera that was later translated to the big screen in Norman Jewison’s 1973 movie.

It’s quaint to contemplate now but at the time there was serious debate about whether the duo’s modish reworking of the Gospels was reverent in the way it rendered the life and times of Jesus more relevant or a staged act of sacrilege.

Such questions are unlikely to be raised in relation to Auckland Theatre Company’s current staging of the show – it takes more than a rock’n’roll saviour to cause conniptions in these jaded times. Which leaves us to consider the much more pertinent matter of whether it’s any good.

The verdict by way of executive summary? Yes – with some caveats.

The production’s greatest strengths are aural, which is as it should be.

Musical director Leon Radojkovic’s arrangement and delivery of the score via his seven-strong live band is flawless, and the vocal performances of the cast, excellent – especially the leading trinity of Laughton Kora (Judas Iscariot),  Julia Deans (Mary Magdalene) and Kristian Lavercombe (Jesus Christ).

Mr Kora brings power and warmth to the conflicted Mr Iscariot; Ms Deans’ clarity of phrasing and pitch is sublime as the holy whore with a heart (and, more importantly here, voice) of gold; and Mr Lavercombe has the range to scale the heights that Baron Lloyd Webber has composed for him to climb.

Dramatically, Mr Lavercombe is less successful in conveying Jesus’ doubts about Big Daddy’s plans to turn him into a sacrificial lamb when singing the soaring Gethsemane, which tends more toward a tantrum (he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy) than a serious spiritual interrogation of fate versus free will.

Although stamping his red winklepicker-shod feet doesn’t exactly help matters, this is more a function of the structure of the song and the story as a whole, however.

Mr Rice and Lloyd Webber are much more interested in and sympathetic to Judas’ damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn’t duel role as betrayer of JC/instrument of God’s will than they are in the Son of God. Mary M’s signature song regarding Mr Christ – I Don’t Know How to Love Him’– is really an admission on their part that ‘We Don’t Know How to Write Him’.

Thus their Jesus turns warbling into whine – but what a fine whine Mr Lavercombe makes of it.

The secondary cast members also register strongly – particularly Andrew Grainger as Pontius Pilate (a uniformed representative of an occupying military force) and Madeleine Sami, barely recognisable in a hairy fat-suit, as cheerfully corrupt and kinky King Herod – and a chorus of Unitec acting students usefully swell the songs and crowd the stage.

That stage – designed by John Verryt – both surrounds and is surrounded by the audience on all sides. The central performance area on the theatre’s floor is tiny and can’t possibly contain the cast, who sing and stride their way through the spectators and around three levels of scaffolding that square the stage, creating a nice sense of intimate immediacy (and potentially a sore neck from constant swivelling).

Even the lighting grid is used as part of the performance, for (spoiler?) Judas’ suicidal swan-dive (though the way this spectacular plummet occurs in darkness is puzzling and the only misstep in Sean Lynch’s otherwise impeccable lighting design).

Elizabeth Whiting’s costuming gives proceedings a contemporary spin – for example, Jesus and his followers are presented as a rock band (as well as those red shoes, JC sports a ‘Death Metal Lives” t-shirt, which I took to be a reference to the Zombie Jesus meme), while the Roman soldiers of more traditional productions are balaclava-bedecked heavies hefting pick-handles here.

If one can quibble with this or that detail, the only truly bum note struck in the show comes in the last supper scene – set in a Chinese restaurant, the staff are played by white performers in such a stereotypically offensive manner that even Winston Peters might be moved to pick up the phone to the race relations commissioner.

Otherwise, director Oliver Driver and company deliver a rousing, roof-raising revival of this now venerable rock opera. It certainly doesn’t plumb the mysteries of Easter’s meaning but it sure does make for a toe-tappin’, singalong (under your breath, at least) lead-in to the increasingly secular Christmas season.

• Jesus Christ Superstar runs until December 14 at Auckland’s Q Theatre. Book here.