SUBSCRIBER WOW: SUPERSTAR

Tales of the creation of Jesus Christ Superstar

In August, the Hollywood Bowl welcomes everyone’s favorite Oz-insurgent Cynthia Erivo as she plays Jesus in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

Superstar is one of a number of musicals that I have always stayed away from, basically because they’re about Jesus. It’s long been my contention that pop culture stories about Jesus and Catholicism are usually very bad—preachy; sentimental; and completely uninterested in anything real or meaty.

As it turns out, it’s also been my experience over many years that I am often wrong. And over the last couple months I have found myself having to add Superstar to the great pile of evidence supporting that conclusion. Because though it is a hard rock-bordering-on-metal musical about the last days of Jesus seen largely from the point of view of Judas, Superstar is a fantastic show, both in its concept and in the kinds of interpretations it has inspired in actors, directors, and designers.

(At this rate I’m probably going to have to reevaluate my feeligns about Godspell, too.)

The thing that finally got me to appreciate Superstar was a job, actually. After the announcement of Erivo at the Bowl, my editor at Sojourners Magazine asked me to write a short history of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Six productions and a whole bunch of books later, including a great behind the scenes work on the creation of the original Broadway production of Superstar, the article I produced was a lot of things, but short wasn’t one of them. And a lot of fun stories have necessarily ended up on the cutting room floor….until now!

For your entertainment, and yours alone, dear subscribers, here are some tasty tidbits from the life of Jesus, as reimagined by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.