I hate to come back to my erstwhile blog seven months later with snark, but sometimes directors leave me no choice.

Hi, everybody! Been focused on a lot of podcast-related stuff, life-related stuff, and work-related stuff (this last is some really good news, but I’m not going to jinx it by spilling details; suffice to say that so far this good news has been overwhelmingly positive, and I hope it continues down that track), but I’m here — in short — because I attended a hot new production of Jesus Christ Superstar and remembered why I avoid most “exciting new takes.”

A friend of mine scored tickets to the 50th anniversary U.S. national tour through a drawing at her work and invited me along since she knew this show was my thing. I mean, the signs were impossible to miss, what with devoting a whole separate blog to it, to say nothing of all the other accumulated JCS paraphernalia and association. Ultimately, we enjoyed it more because we went RiffTrax on its ass than anything else (our 12-page review can be found here) — the cast was never more than simply good, the storytelling was confusing at best, and the avant-garde minimalism of its design and staging hurt them more than it helped. If there was any power or strength in this production, I lost it in the mad rush of the show’s ridiculous pacing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad JCS is so great, so timeless, and so easily open to interpretation. I just wish Andrew Lloyd Webber was putting his money behind a better one than this.

But the thing that struck me most of all was how easy it would have been to correctly present the production’s basic premise. This rendition attempts to lean into JCS‘ rock star metaphor rather than its biblical surface story, in short focusing more on the “superstar” part of the title than the “Jesus Christ” part. The leading man, Aaron LaVigne, went so far as to compare his Jesus in an interview to artists like Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain, saying each was the object of unhealthy levels of reverence and their respective surges in popularity ultimately destroyed them (kind of a one-note reading of their respective mental health struggles, but you do you, boo-boo), and this production commented on that, using microphones, instruments, etc., as props.

I admit I had reservations; I thought the point of using the events surrounding Christ’s Passion as an allegory for the modern public’s fascination with cults of personality was to allow us to draw parallels from Roman-occupied Palestine to today’s celebrity-obsessed world ourselves, not for the creative team to blatantly spell it out like a (pardon my phrasing) religious tract. Still, I was open to it.

The staging turned out to be so muddled and vague that none of this was telegraphed at all, as my +1 put it. Whatever they set out to depict, they did not stick the landing. But upon reflection, I realized this production was far from unique in that regard. Indeed, it struck me that this was a problem with most “updates” of JCS I’d seen, going back to the 2000 video. Now, I do get why people revamp the show. With so many clear parallels to our modern world, setting it in the present could help make the story accessible to a contemporary audience, while retaining its point and its power. Honestly, I feel a director can do whatever they want with the setting… so long as it is properly established and justified. If you don’t do that, you can’t be surprised when people feel alienated and “switch off.”

But most of them haven’t done that:

  • In an essay elsewhere on this blog, I outline my many issues with the 2000 video’s design, direction, and performances. But in addition to all of that confusing mess, it doesn’t paint a clear picture in story terms. It seems to be just retelling events from the Bible in mixed modern dress, and honestly, I’ll take that a hell of a lot easier in the 1973 film’s flavor, where the design had an actual point.
  • The 2012 arena tour with Tim Minchin had many of the same problems as the 2000 video, among them essentially remounting exactly that whilst deciding on a uniform design approach that raises more questions than it answers: if this is set in what amounts to Occupy Jerusalem, what is the cause that unites Jesus and his followers? That was never explicitly made clear, and as such, it made the references to religion in the rest of the show and God’s responsibility for the events that occurred sound like so much melodrama. And many scenes simply made no sense in the new context, for example, “The Temple,” which made me think, “Why is he in a strip club? It’s not his ‘temple,’ he doesn’t own the joint. For that matter, why does he care about the immorality, we don’t even know what his cause is?” (You can argue it might be a nightclub in a former church, but while that’s a creative resetting in and of itself, it still begs the question of why he cares, since he is not once established as any kind of specifically religious reformer.)
  • This production, which originated at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and has been a massive success in London (and fairly successful here in the States, both at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in spring 2018 and on tour), was only more confusing. I couldn’t tell if it was even telling a story. I had to read an interview with the leading man to confirm my guess at what they were trying to do — that’s a bad sign. And again, more questions: why is Herod something out of a nightmarish fever dream? (Although I’ll give him bonus points for a scene managing to reference the actual story, not that it mattered in a show otherwise empty of that.) What’s with all the inconsistently symbolic glitter? What is the Temple scene meant to show when you completely divorce the lyrics from their context? Why is the choreography a bunch of half-assed, modern dance bull? There has been many a production of JCS where I might advise audience members to come in already having some knowledge of the Bible, but this one would be next to impossible to follow even if you were already familiar.

And it made me think back to the other times I wrote on this topic outside of the JCS realm, covering everything from “shock-for-the-sake-of-shock” productions of Cabaret, to “change-for-the-sake-of-change” revivals of West Side Story, to increasingly caricaturish takes on Gypsy, to a supposedly enlightening variant of Godspell that I maintain insulted the audience’s basic intelligence. (Thus my titling this post as the third in what became a series.)

More than that, it made me think about other crazy ideas I’d encountered over the years of reading about “cleverness” in the arts, like those regional theater directors — there have been many — who attempt to update A Chorus Line as though fresh topical references and musical arrangements are just what it needs.

People, for the love of God… as James Joyce once said, “In the particular lies the universal.” These pieces resonate because no matter when in time we find ourselves, there is always room for childlike hope and faith in the face of cynicism and a reminder that — to quote Bertrand Russell — “the only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation” (Godspell); all children, perhaps especially stage children, eventually become their parents (Gypsy); those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it (in looking at the current political landscape and national issues, at least in America, this applies equally to Cabaret and West Side Story); every dancer wants one more shot before it’s too late for them to try again (A Chorus Line); and, arguably, idol worship is as old as myth itself, at times obscuring the reality that lies beneath (JCS). People will find what to relate to without needing the story to be something happening right now a few blocks away.

That’s not to say there is no room for a fresh take. But be so particular about it that the audience finds the universal within. In my review of the JCS tour, I noted that what the Regent’s Park production was trying to accomplish had already been done far more successfully at an amateur level, referring specifically to the 2012 Avondale Theatre Company production (the link is to a pro-shot on YouTube).

Their staging also dealt with the perils of fame and celebrity in the modern age more than Israel in 4 B.C., but it did so clearly, setting it specifically in the music industry with an opening projection depicting a fake news release explaining the whole conceit in one swoop: Caesar is a mogul who owns an entertainment conglomerate, Pilate is the CEO of his record division, the priests are company hacks, Herod is a washed-up one-hit-wonder reduced to serving as A&R for the Galilee subsidiary, and they’re all threatened by the rise of Jesus and his band Nazareth (the apostles), an up-and-coming indie group with an anti-establishment message who are carefully watched over by increasingly concerned manager Judas as their popularity grows with the fickle public. They even played with the touchy possible subtext of Judas competing with Mary for Jesus’ love and attention by addressing it directly and casting a woman as Judas to make it all the plainer.

And you know what? All the twists paid off, in my opinion at least, largely because it was a highly specific update, and therein lay the universal. From the first moment, it was made clear that the references to things religious would be a metaphor for what was going on with the celebrity rather than vice versa, you knew why the baddies wanted to put Jesus down, everything that changed was appropriate to the setting (Judas OD’ed on heroin, for example), the whole nine. Yes, it was a bit different, but the rules had been established, everything had a clear arc, and you could follow it. It successfully made all the points Regent’s Park was trying (and, in my opinion, failed) to make, just by being precise in its aim.

If you take nothing else from this post, aspiring creative types, remember that aphorism: “In the particular lies the universal.” Take it to heart, and go and do likewise as much as you possibly can.