Theatre
Jesus Christ Superstar
Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London
William Russell
four stars
THE summer musical in Regent's Park is something of an annual treat and this staging by Timothy Sheader of the Rice and Lloyd Webber musical keeps up that tradition. It contains a charismatic performance from pint-sized Tyrone Huntley as Judas that is so good, that – combined with a very bland Jesus from Declan Bennett – the evening becomes pretty well Judas Iscariot Superstar.
The book of Jesus Christ Superstar was always a problem as the show originated as double record album and turning it into a musical presented problems then and now. Act One remains a bit of a slog dramatically. In Act Two, however, things improve greatly and by the end Sheader is firing on all cylinders. The songs are the thing and all those years later – it opened on Broadway in 1971 – they are still among some of the pair's best. The Broadway director threw everything in the book at it. When it opened in London the following year it was in a far simpler, starker production and Sheader follows suit, treating it as a rock concert rather than a musical, with lots of hand-held mikes, sequins, gold body paint and coloured smoke and the cast dressed in hoodies and drab practice clothes.
There is a hard working ensemble, a splendid high camp turn from Peter Caulfield as Herod, drowning in a vast gold lame gown and then just gold lame hot pants, and a sinister, well sung, Pilate from David Thaxton. But while he sings perfectly well, Bennett's Jesus tends to vanish into the throng, which slightly weakens the whole thing. Full justice is done to the score by a first rate band, the sound system works a treat, and the result is as good a rock concert in the park as one could wish for.
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