Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar wasn’t always such a harmless bit of all-ages fun: MCA, which put it out as an album first, premiered the stage show warily in 1971, at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York, with slide projections of religious art and a boozeless reception afterward. That didn’t appease Billy Graham, who declared that it “borders on blasphemy and sacrilege,” or the folks who picketed it on Broadway shouting “Read the book!” My devout Catholic parents always insisted that my brothers and sister and I treat it with respect, listening all the way through and reading the libretto, but still the album cleaved their collection of show tunes like Moses parting the Red Sea. Anyone could tell this was a new kind of gospel, with no miracles, no resurrection, and no promises, and Jesus (Ian Gillan, whom Rice and Lloyd Webber plucked from Deep Purple) shrieking at lepers and temple merchants as though he might at any moment tear into “Space Truckin’”: Come ow-n! Come ow-n!
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Like Rice and Lloyd Webber’s Evita and Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, Jesus Christ Superstar sets up an equation between fame and divinity–a decade before John Lennon’s murder, Judas was the ultimate disillusioned fan, selling his idol to the Man for 30 pieces of silver. But the last 27 years have brought fresh outrages, and the music that caused so much controversy has long since been overtaken by the celebrity culture it critiqued, absorbed into the ranks of suburban cabaret. The Pheasant Run production, directed by Diana Martinez, compromises Judas’s narration to make the show more palatable to conservative folk and waters down his searing rock numbers from the original score. Why–some might say it borders on blasphemy and sacrilege.
Rice brought similarly sharp characterizations to Christ, Pontius Pilate, and Mary Magdalene using the best of Lloyd Webber’s varied–and sometimes overwrought–music. Rock fans who like Jesus Christ Superstar frequently feel the need to apologize: its vaudevillian turns can be hard to swallow, the property has been mishandled on both stage and screen, and the authors have since produced a plague of glitzy lite-rock musicals. But the original recording is nothing to be embarrassed about, a driven pastiche of musical styles and fine performances. Barry Dennen had played the master of ceremonies in Cabaret before being cast as Pontius Pilate and brought an icy hysteria to his role, especially his Weill-like interrogation of Christ. Yvonne Elliman, a 17-year-old Hawaiian singer Lloyd Webber found at a London club called the Pheasantry, scored a hit single with the torchy “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” As Jesus, Gillan delivered the Lord’s self-doubting prayer in “Gethsemane” from the bottom of his white-soul heart. And casting the rest of the album mostly with rock singers produced some strangely arresting voices–like Victor Brox, one of Screaming Lord Sutch’s Heavy Friends, singing the bass role of Caiaphas. Released in October 1970, the album sold over two million copies within a year and spurred numerous unlicensed theatrical productions in the U.S.
My wife had actually worked at Pheasant Run for about six months while she was in high school, so she came along. Though it’s a dinner theater production, no meal was served before the matinee, so we opted for coffee and doughnuts in the food court and watched elderly people and parents with children wander past. “Bourbon Street,” it’s called, with brick floors, old-fashioned lampposts, and railed balconies overhead. Behind one, a trio of wooden dummies were painted to look like (white) Dixieland jazz musicians. My wife told me about her job as a cashier in one of the retail shops off Bourbon Street. Once a man asked her to come stay with him in his condo in Toronto. She told him she was only 15. I peered around, wondering if any Humbert Humberts were prowling the area this afternoon. Before long the doors opened for the play, and we found our seats. Each table had a menu with the classic Jesus Christ Superstar logo of two angels in prayer; it offered novelty drinks like “Pilate’s Dream,” “Jaded Judas,” “The Denial,” and “Herod’s Revenge” (“You might lose your head over this commanding mixture of Peach Schnapps, Creme de Cacao, grenadine and cream”).
