Did you see we waved? #JesusChristSuperstar pic.twitter.com/696PEqZQfX— Jesus Christ Superstar (@JCSTheMusical) April 2, 2018
How did things get so out of hand? #JesusChristSuperstar pic.twitter.com/wiSVwBUJqx— Jesus Christ Superstar (@JCSTheMusical) April 2, 2018
NBC's broadcast of Jesus Christ Superstar is available now online. Spoiler: it was awesome.
No Miss C., it was not awesome. On a scale of 1 to 5
ReplyDeletewith the original being a 5, I give it a very generous
3 stars. As a naïve child who grew up strictly catholic,
the original was a seminal event for me. I learned much
about society, religion and politics from it. I wore out
the vinyl, have the CD/DVD, been to 3-4 performances
including the 25th and 40th anniversaries. I watch it
every year and was going to again before the NBC show.
Glad I didn’t.
JCSS is not just a performance and was never intended to
be one. It’s so much more than that; a play set to music
is one way to describe it. But a performance is what we
got. The cast played more to the audience than to each
other – and the audience has no business participating in
this particular play.
There was no chemistry and no emotion. Ok some. Ben
Daniels as Pilate was great – start to finish. If Brandon
Dixon showed just half the emotion in the opening as he did
in the closing that would have set a tone; but it was a
terrible start. John Legend has no presence and was a poor
choice for Jesus. Alice Cooper may have been a good choice,
but Herod’s song as presented was wasted.
And they changed the lyrics. Sorry. Didn’t make it for me. .
I'm no theater critic. I watched it thinking about Jesus, and about when I was a teenager and listened to the album over and over.
ReplyDeleteEh. LOVED Pilate, liked Herod and Judas was OK. Was not impressed by Jesus, Mary, or Peter at all.
ReplyDeleteI am just not sure why they keep making mediocre live versions of perfectly good movies if they cannot bring something new to the party.