Happy
Easter!
One
thing I can’t help noticing this time of year, besides the dramatically
improved weather, are the proliferations of bad Jesus Christ Superstar
productions.
It’s
funny because I adore Jesus Christ Superstar. I watch it every year.
I’ve it twice on stage, both with Ted Neeley. I’ve got my picture taken with
Ian Gillan. I’ve practically memorized it, I could do the whole show for you
playing every part. I can hit all the notes too, except maybe Caiaphas’. So I am definitely a believer as far as this
show’s concerned. But every year, I find myself enjoying new renditions of it
less and less.
Part
of it is because the robust rock singing it requires has long gone out of
style, and squeaky clean modern singers brought up on pop can’t do it.
But
even more than that, I feel like recent directors have obliterated what there
was of substance with inflated style. Massive special effects and costumes and
sets and props and huge casts doing huge numbers. It’s gaudy, tacky, shallow, gimmicky,
and self-indulgent. At times it’s borderline obscene.
At
least two productions now have turned the finale into torture porn, with a
singing and dancing Judas, flanked by sexy chorus girls, gloating over the
broken body of Jesus. Not a trace of Christian redemption. And audiences eat it up. Truly, we are Pontius Pilot’s vultures.
The
shows also fully buy into the modern fetish for anachronism. Just as
Shakespeare’s plays are rarely performed in their own era, JSC just about never
seems to take place in ancient Israel. In 2012, Lawrence Connor put it smack
dab into contemporary London, right after the riots. The Overture is drowned by
BBC news announcers, balaclava clad Black Blockers swarm the stage and perform
a pitched battle with riot cops. Then are tongues of fire bursting from the
sides, and a massive laser show in the background of revolving anarchy logos.
JSC as Kiss concert.
Anachronism
is a tricky thing. In small doses, it can keep you on your toes. It can broaden
the scope of meaning. But to life a work wholesale from its time and place, and
plunk it smack dab into a completely different time and place, robs it of its
context. Words and actions that meant one thing at one time, can mean a very
different thing at a different time. With JCS set in the modern world, what are
we to make of Judas’ lines
“If you’d come today you
could have reached a whole nation,
Israel in BC had no mass
communication.”
Even as everyone around him
is texting and presumably updating their Instagram accounts.
How about removing the Roman occupation from a play where
everyone complains about the Roman occupation?
What about Judas’ prudery in “Strange Thing”? An
Israelite nationalist from 4 BC might get away with it, but an anarchist
captain, as he’s portrayed here? Would a guy like this even hold such views?
Examples abound. In the new setting, the words just don’t
mean the same thing anymore, if they mean anything at all.
Some of the imagery aren’t entirely without meaning.
Revolutionary Jesus is not a new motif, so putting him amidst the Occupy
movement is not necessary a bad idea, if for no other reason than it would
mightily piss-off the Mega-Church Pharisees who proclaim most loudly to follow
him now. (This was probably the idea). But it has its risks. Putting Simon
Zealot in a Che Guevara shirt makes sense because he and the others wanted
Jesus to be more of a Che-Guevara figure. But Jesus wasn’t having it. “None of
you understand what power is, understand what glory is.” Having placed Christ firmly on the side of the
demonstrators, did Connor really want to show him taking the wind out of their
sails?
Don’t forget either, that these adoring crowds all turned
on him in the end. The rapturous fans waving palms at him as he entered
Jerusalem on a donkey and the braying mobs demanding his execution were largely
the same people. Are anti-poverty activists still the best analogy? It
does present its own possibilities: could all those cries of “Cru-Ci-Fy HIM!”
have been done over Twitter? Could not something be said about the fickle moods
of crowds? Maybe, but that would have taken more nuance than analogies this
forced can handle.
To make a long story short: a possible analogy isn’t the
same as parallel meaning.
I keep thinking back to the Norman Jewison film of 1973.
It was far from perfect. At times it is very problematic. It’s as tacky as only
the early 70’s could be. Somehow though,
it works.
It was jam packed with anachronism. But it’s anachronisms
were so small scale and impressionistic, all incongruous costumes and props,
that, as the opening made clear, could all fit into a rental bus (well, maybe
not the tanks). They fed the idea that this was a small-scale, impromptu
performance put on by a travelling hippie troop, wandering into the desert. It
certainly isn’t comparable to the multi-billion production Connor stages at the
OC. With a little imagination, props can represent things, abstract ideas or
just impressions of feelings, beyond time and space. When nothing’s left to the
imagination though. . .nothing’s left.
And the crucifixion itself. We’ve spoken of it already,
the apparently popular idea of Judas as Christ’s chief torturer. Why do I feel
that many of the same people who complain about nudity in horror films didn’t
mind one bit all that T&A jiggling around a bloody victim getting dragged
across the ground and strung up to a lighting fixture. You don’t need to be
religious to find the lack of humanity appalling. (Do you?)
Jewison handles it differently. Pilot, Herod, the
Pharisees and the crowds disappear into a black void. The bruised, bloodied,
and broken Jesus sheds his mutilated flesh, and becomes blindingly bright
spirit. He reaches out to the audience, as if to say: “It’s alright. I’ll be
fine. Come unto me, and go in Peace.”
Cue Judas.
Oh, he’s still the ultra-skeptic, still the doubter,
still the questioner, but not an enemy. He’s sure as hell not gloating. Just now
they’re both dead, they can talk about these things. There will always be room
for doubt, but there’s no sadism anywhere. Maybe there’s even forgiveness.
There’s enough of the Catholic left it me to still find
it powerful and beautiful and moving. I’ll stick with that vision, and the Vultures
can stick with theirs.
