Months ago, I was checking theater schedules to see if Hamilton was coming to the Twin Cities in the foreseeable future (it’s not), I saw that Jersey Boys was coming back to town next spring. Zack is the only one in the family who hasn’t seen it yet, so I asked him if he’d like me to get us tickets as his birthday present for 2018.
He answered “Jesus Christ Superstar is coming this year and its my favorite show, so how about you get tickets for that show for my birthday this year?”
Then Josie chimed in with the info that she’s never seen JCSuperstar and that she has a birthday every year, too.
So that’s how four of us (Jay loves this show) ended up at the Ordway Theater in downtown St. Paul on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
We took the scenic route from our neighborhood over the river to our sister city. As usual, when visiting St. Paul, I was impressed.
We in Minneapolis always flatter ourselves that we live in the prettier of the two cities but every time I go to St. Paul, I can see that we’re deluding ourselves. That’s Mpls: take away our delusions and we’re nothing but a smallish US city with breath taking parks and parkways everywhere you look. St. Paul is filled with beautiful neighborhoods and their downtown is much prettier than ours. Rice park is lovely, with the Ordway and City Hall edging it. The Excel, where I saw Queen a week ago, is right around the corner and the Mississippi river is only two blocks away. It’s beautiful in the dead of winter, when the park is filled with ice sculptures and it’s beautiful on a clear warm summer day.
I lost count of how many shows I’ve seen at at the Ordway. I’ve seen the Phantom of the Opera there, as well as Rent, at least twice. I saw Chicago there years ago. I’ve forgotten what else I may have seen there but it’s a wonderful place: not a bad seat in the house.
The seats aren’t the only thing that are never bad: the show was terrific!
I’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar at least three, maybe four times, over the years and I’ve enjoyed it each time but this was my favorite production.
They played fast and loose with the casting: in the past, the role of Judas has always been a black man. This was the first time I’ve ever seen a white guy play Judas.
I’ve always considered the part of Judas Iscariot the best role in musical theater, until I heard what Lin Manuel Miranda did for Aaron Burr, anyway. I understand the symbolism of casting Judas as black; a bit heavy handed of course but the show was written way back in 1970 by a 22 year old Andrew Lloyd Webber, so you have to cut him some slack. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if Judas is cast as a handicapped Pacific Islander of indeterminate gender as long as (s)he can sing his ass off as the role demands. Judas was a real person, a real Middle Eastern Jew but nobody ever insists he be cast as such.
In this production, Jesus, Simon the Zealot and Peter were all black and they were all great but the most interesting casting was that of Herod. He was played by a woman and she was fabulous. As usual, Herod’s number was a show stopper. A bit of musical theater camp as sorbet before we dive into the meat of torture and death by crucifixion.
It occurred to me that if you’re about recasting the parts of the show in interesting ways, I wouldn’t mind seeing Judas played by a woman and Mary Magdalene as a guy. That would add some interesting layers to a story everyone knows!
All the performers were excellent. If I had to pick a weak link I’d have to say it was Mary Magdalene. Don't get me wrong, she had a wonderful voice! Mary Magdalene gets three of the best songs in the show and this gal nailed all three, voice-wise. Her singing was great but she was no actress. She had no idea what to do with herself onstage. While her singing was excellent, she delivered all three songs with the exact same emotion. The three songs are very emotional but the feelings expressed by each is very different. In Everything’s Alright, she’s trying to comfort Jesus; it’s basically a lullabye. In I Don’t Know How to Love Him, we get insight into the heart and mind of a woman who’s been up the creek and over the mountain, trying to deal with feelings of a very different sort for a very different sort of man. In Can We Start Again, Please? She’s dealing with the horror and disbelief of seeing the man around whom her entire existence revolves, convicted and sentenced to death. That’s quite an emotional range there! Delivering them all in the same tone flattened her performance. But her voice was so good this was a mere quibble.
We all enjoyed the show thoroughly. This was the second Sunday in a row that Josie spent at the theater. Jesus Christ Superstar is a great show and I’m glad that Josie has now seen it but I’m a bit sorry that she saw it one week after seeing Hamilton, the greatest musical ever written. That’s just not a fair comparison.
The show got out at 4:00. We took the scenic route home and I had just enough time to bolt a bowl of cereal, change my clothes and get to the Arboretum, where I butchered an attempt at painting some sunlit banks of flowers.
Oh well. Not every artistic endeavor is destined for success.