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This article was written for thearticle.com<\/a>. What follows is my pre-edited draft. The final article may be read here<\/a>. Thanks are hereby expressed to editors Daniel Johnson and Olivia Utley.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>AND JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus Christ Superstar <\/em>[Jesus<\/em>], Barbican, dir. Timothy Sheader, July-August 2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat <\/em>[Joseph<\/em>], London Palladium, dir. Laurence Conor, July-September 2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n By chance I have seen both Jesus Christ Superstar <\/em>and Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat\u00a0<\/em>this week. Perhaps by chance, they are running simultaneously on the London stage. Not at all by chance, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice developed them simultaneously between 1968 and 72. Pop takes on Bible stories were at that time hitting a stride; Joseph\u00a0<\/em>was commissioned by a teacher at Colet Court boys\u2019 prep school in London explicitly in response to Herbert Chappell\u2019s The Daniel Jazz <\/em>of 1963, and Michael Hurd\u2019s The Jonah-Man Jazz\u00a0<\/em>of 1966.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As far as the New Testament was concerned, a tradition of imaginative reconstructions of Christ\u2019s life had been developing over the entire preceding century, starting with Higher Critical biographies such as Ernst Renan\u2019s 1863 Vie de J\u00e9sus<\/em>. This depicted its subject as a man not a God, rejected the miracles, and was criticised by some Jewish people for asserting the ethical superiority of Christianity (a criticism which was to recur in relation to such ventures). In the following decade Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov<\/em>, in which Ivan Karamazov imagines what would have happened had Christ returned to Seville at the time of the Inquisition (he would have been sentenced to death at the stake). D. H. Lawrence\u2019s last prose work was an introduction to an English translation of this episode. In the preceding year, 1929, he had been inspired by it to write his own story of Christ resurrected, The Man Who Died<\/em>, in which Christ wanders from his tomb to Sinai, where he for the first time comes to full life in the flesh through an affair with a Priestess of Isis. His Russian contemporary Mikhail Bulgakov was also inspired by Dostoevsky\u2019s Jesus to create the metafictional, passively resistant Yeshua Ha-Notsri in his 1928-40 novel\u00a0The Master and Margarita<\/em>. \u00a0The deeply-religious, strongly-anticlerical Greek novelist Nikos Kazantsakis was also inspired by Dostoevsky, and possibly by Lawrence; his 1948 novel Christ Recrucified\u00a0<\/em>imagines a recapitulation of the passion story by those enacting it in a village under Ottoman occupation. Seven years later his The Last Temptation of Christ<\/em>, like Renan\u2019s biography, treats Jesus as a man subject to all human temptations \u2013 but, exceptionally, as resisting them. The Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini\u2019s 1964 The Gospel According to Saint Matthew<\/em>, whilst cleaving strongly to its Gospel, also showed a man of passion and temper.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All of these works rejuvenated Christ and his religion during a long period of declining church attendance in the West; the Second Vatican Council of 1962-5, and the New English Bible of 1961-70, aimed to do the same. Godspell\u00a0<\/em>(1971, with a film in 1973) coincided with Jesus <\/em>in stressing Christ\u2019s humanity over his divinity, and in not depicting his miracles. Both these musicals aligned Christ with the hippie movement, and therefore also vice versa; one of the reasons that \u2018Jesus Christ Superstar\u2019 worked as a concept was that several pop stars of the period already looked like (a dominant Western visualisation of) Christ: Paul Rodgers of Free, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, Jim Morrison, and Cat Stevens. In the 1973 film of Jesus<\/em>, the priests and potentates wore defined costumes whereas the disciples retained much of the actors\u2019 own youthful garb. By the same token, feminism in its Second Wave had not yet taken hold; both Joseph <\/em>and\u00a0Jesus <\/em>are male-dominated stories, offering only minor roles for women: solos for just Potipher\u2019s wife and Mary Magdalene, choruses for Joseph\u2019s brothers\u2019 wives and the Apostles\u2019 wives, and dancers for Pharaoh and Herod; the current production of Joseph\u00a0<\/em>moderates this imbalance by giving the parts of both Jacob and the narrator to a female singer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Apart from these theological reasons, there were geopolitical reasons for taking an interest in the Bible and its lands at that time. The period of Joseph <\/em>and Jesus<\/em>\u2019s development coincided with the 1967 Six Day War, the 1967-70 War of Attrition, the Palestinian attack on the Israeli Olympic team in 1972 (the same year as the first professional production of Joseph<\/em>), and the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (which took place just months after Norman Jewison\u2019s film version of Jesus\u00a0<\/em>had been shot in Beit Guvrin National Park and Beit She\u2019an; the latter had been a target for rockets fired from Jordan since 1969. This military context explains the two intrusions of contemporary weaponry into the film: when Judas is debating whether or not to betray Jesus, he is decided by the appearance of five armoured tanks bearing down on him across the desert; he flees before them to the high priests. After he has betrayed Jesus, a military jet crosses the sky, either implying that Judas is caught up in historical processes beyond his control, or that contemporary Israeli weaponry is standing in for the Satan of Luke 22: 3 (who enters Judas before he betrays Christ); either way, \u2018I really didn\u2019t come here of my own accord\u2019. Egypt, where most of Joseph <\/em>is set, lost control of the Sinai peninsula to Israel in 1967 (the year before the musical\u2019s originary cantata was written), and regained it between 1973 (when it received its first West End performance) and 1982, when Israel finally withdrew.At the time of the Biblical Joseph, and again in the 1960s, Egypt was a major regional power, and Joseph\u2019s good management of Egypt\u2019s economy and his alleviation of the people\u2019s hunger may have reminded contemporary audiences of President Nasser.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The two musicals are entwined both thematically and developmentally; the success of the Jesus\u00a0<\/em>concept album of 1970 and the Broadway and West End shows of 1971-2 inspired Lloyd Webber and Rice to lengthen Joseph <\/em>from fifteen minutes to full length. The similarities and contrasts of the two works must have been vividly present to their young creators\u2019 minds (Lloyd Webber and Rice were 22 and 26 in 1970). They are sung-through dance musicals based on Genesis 37-46, and three of the Gospels\u2019 accounts of Holy Week, respectively. Both centre on an exceptional and charismatic young man who believes that he has a uniquely close relationship to God, stands out from his circumambient group of ten or so other young men, arouses jealousy, is sold (for twenty pieces of silver in Joseph\u2019s case [Genesis 38: 2], thirty in Jesus\u2019s [Matthew 26: 15]), and is brought low. Both are tested by a preposterous potentate (Pharaoh and Herod), their betrayers eventually repent and are forgiven, and in one manner or another they triumph, with the point being made that evil had to be allowed free rein in order for God\u2019s higher good to be achieved (in Genesis 45: 8 Joseph comforts his brothers: \u2018So it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt\u2019).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For all these similarities, the musicals are profoundly different. The differences may partly be accounted for by the fact that one was written for children, and the other as a concept album for thinking rock fans. The music of Joseph\u00a0<\/em>is as easy as may be required by any school (adult productions of Joseph\u00a0<\/em>tend to use some child singers, as the current one does even in the role of Potiphar); Jesus\u00a0<\/em>is notoriously demanding even of professionals. One result of this is that many people in the English-speaking world have encountered, if not appeared in, Joseph\u00a0<\/em>at some stage in their childhood; this would explain why so many of the Palladium audience were able to sing along to so many of the songs, and to laugh at indistinctly-delivered one-liners. By contrast, when singing the title song \u2018Jesus Christ,Superstar\u2019, most people fail to get past the title, and substitute \u2018daa-di-di daa-di-di\u2019 until it recurs (paralleling the fact that many people today know little more about Jesus Christ than that he is\u00a0<\/em>a superstar).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The difference is that between a light-hearted comedy for children, and a tragi-comedy for adults; a riches-to-rags-to-even-greater-riches story versus a passion. Joseph<\/em>has far more musical and verbal humour; its pastiches include country and blues (\u2018One More Angel in Heaven\u2019), rock \u2018n roll (\u2018Song of the King\u2019), chanson (\u2018Those Canaan Days\u2019) and calypso (\u2018Benjamin\u2019); Jesus\u00a0<\/em>has only \u2018King Herod\u2019s Song\u2019 in ragtime; much of the rest is haunting rock with a heavy emphasis on threatening horns and distorted guitar. Joseph\u00a0<\/em>abounds in such couplets as \u2018All these things you saw in your pyjamas\/Are a long-range forecast for your farmers\u2019; the wit of Jesus\u00a0<\/em>is mixed with more serious subject matter; the Priests ask \u2018Where do we start with a man who is bigger\/ Than John was when John did his baptism thing?\u2019; Caiaphas punningly tells Judas\u2018We\u2019ll pay you in silver, cash on the nail\u2019; Jesus ambiguously tells the Apostles to \u2018stick to fishing from now on\u2019. These differences of tone are strongly emphasised by the sets of the current productions: Joseph\u00a0<\/em>is all bright sun, sand, and eponymous technicolor; Jesus<\/em>, a production which ran outdoors at Regent\u2019s Park in 2016 and 2017, is now confined in a dark set with rusting iron cruciform girders. Both musicals contain an anguished song by a prisoner (\u2018Close Every Door to Me\u2019) or someone who is about to become one (\u2018Gethsemane\u2019), but the difference of anguish and profundity between the two songs marks clearly the difference of the musicals. Joseph is oddly masochistic:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Do what you want with me,<\/p>\n Hate me and laugh at me<\/p>\n Darken my daytime<\/p>\n And torture my night.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus agrees to fulfil God\u2019s will only with and despite understandable horror:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I only want to say,<\/p>\n If there is a way,<\/p>\n Take this cup away from me<\/p>\n For I don\u2019t want to taste its poison.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yet the difference is not just one of emotional tenor. For all the plot similarities, the musicals differ in their ethics in ways which arguably correspond to their respectively Old and New Testament origins. Jesus<\/em>, but as far as I am aware not Joseph<\/em>, has been criticised by some Jewish people; the current production of the former parries charges of antisemitism by associating Christian symbols with both the high priests and the Temple merchants (in the latter case encouraged by the merchants\u2019 line \u2018Sunday here we go again\u2019). Two years ago Tim Rice criticised a group of schools in New Zealand for changing Joseph\u2019s affiliation in \u2018Close Every Door to me\u2019 from \u2018Children of Israel\u2019 (who \u2018have been promised a land of our own\u2019) to \u2018Children of Kindness\u2019: \u2018I mean Joseph is an innocent story straight from the Bible and these people in New Zealand thought we were making statements about Israel\u00a0and Palestine\u00a0– bonkers.\u2019 He and Lloyd Webber might indeed have written in such an innocent spirit, even whilst Israel was militarily asserting that \u2018land of our own\u2019, but in the current production it was hard not to wonder whether the huge applause for this song was not tinged with support for \u2018Children of Israel\u2019 being \u2018never alone\u2019. By contrast, Jesus\u00a0<\/em>emphasises Christ\u2019s prophecy of the Temple\u2019s destruction.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Beyond this, what ethics may be inferred in Joseph<\/em>? There is a vague, sappy, American-style insistence on the importance of having dreams, which is somehow conflated with Joseph\u2019s gifts at dreaming and dream-interpretation. The Narrator tells us, questionably:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We all dream a lot – some are lucky, some are not In the next song Joseph enigmatically asserts that \u2018Any Dream Will Do\u2019. This either means that any ambition or delusion is fine as long as one has one (absurd), or else he is offering to demonstrate his dream-interpreting skills, for which \u2018any dream will do\u2019. The same song contains more that is lyrically suggestive but analytically incomprehensible:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The world and I, we are still waiting <\/p>\n The chorus \u2018Go Go Go Joseph\u2019, intended to buck Joseph up whilst he is in jail, may be understood as counselling everyone to never give up:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hang on now Joseph you\u2019ll make it some day<\/p>\n Don’t give up Joseph; fight till you drop<\/p>\n <\/p>\n but the next line makes the qualification:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We\u2019ve read the book and you come out on top.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Whether or not one should despair, in that case, depends on one\u2019s fate; later in the same song Joseph reveals to Pharaoh\u2019s baker that \u2018Your execution date is set\u2019, at which point the Chorus declines to nonetheless exhort \u2018Go Go Go Baker\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Genesis it is clear that Joseph is not just his father\u2019s favourite (because he is the child of Jacob\u2019s \u2018old age\u2019, 37: 3), but that he is also uniquely beloved of and protected by God. Yet Joseph <\/em>does not mention God once. As a consequence, Joseph is secularised into someone who is gifted with exceptional good looks, talents, and luck, the implication being that by virtue of the former two, he also deserves the last. To envy such a person, as his brothers do, is an example of \u2018tall poppy syndrome\u2019 (the desire to cut down those who excel). Rather, the musical implies, such people should be celebrated, even adored, for their gifts and luck. Underneath the exuberant music is therefore concealed a rather ruthlessly meritocratic, laissez-faire ethos. It is in a parodic chanson that the brothers mendaciously tell Jacob that Joseph is \u2018One More Angel in Heaven\u2019, but that his ideals \u2018Like peace and love\u2019 will \u2018never die\u2019. For all his charisma and courage, there is no evidence that these have ever been Joseph\u2019s ideals. His forgiveness of his brothers for their perfidy not only comes after a test of their reformation (by seeing whether they will defend their brother Benjamin), but is relatively easily dispensed from the height of his new relative position, as is the reverse of the case during Christ\u2019s death. In \u2018Stone the Crows\u2019 the chorus claims that Joseph is the \u2018Greatest man since Noah\/ Only goes to shoah\u2019, before Joseph concludes with the crashing non sequitur \u2018Anyone from anywhere can make it\/ If they get a lucky break\u2019. If anything this musical proves that \u2018lucky\u2019 breaks are given only to those who are already well favoured. The rewards of such blessings are firmly of this world: not only does the musical celebrate fancy clothing in its title and its closing lines (\u2018Give me my coloured coat,\/ My amazing coloured\/Coat\u2019), but also other trappings of favour and power:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Joseph got a royal pardon<\/p>\n And a host of splendid things<\/p>\n A chariot of gold, a cloak,<\/p>\n A medal and some signet rings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is emphasised, to triumphal music, that Joseph comes to meet Jacob<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In his chariot<\/p>\n Of gold<\/p>\n Of gold<\/p>\n Of gold<\/p>\n Of gold!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The contrast with Jesus\u2019s entry to Jerusalem, in a coat of no particular colour, on an ass, hardly needs pointing. Joseph\u2019s position of power, celebrated within his musical, is circumscribed by Jesus\u2019s insistence that:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand,<\/p>\n Nor the Romans, nor the Jews,<\/p>\n Nor Judas, nor the twelve<\/p>\n Nor the priests, nor the scribes,<\/p>\n Nor doomed Jerusalem itself<\/p>\n Understand what power is,<\/p>\n Understand what glory is,<\/p>\n Understand at all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus<\/em>, though stressing Christ\u2019s human susceptibility to fatigue, stress, anger, and fear of violent death (though not lust), is largely orthodox in its presentation of his ethics. Tim Rice, unlike Pasolini (who sticks to Matthew), roams easily across the Gospels according to Matthew, Luke and John in search of what he wants: Christ\u2019s counsel to \u2018Save tomorrow for tomorrow;\/Think about today instead\u2019 is based on Matthew 6: 34; Mary Magdalene\u2019s care of Jesus is based on the account of the \u2018sinful woman\u2019 in Luke 7, but Judas\u2019s criticism of Jesus for accepting it is taken from John 12. Caiaphas telling him to quiet his supporters is based on Luke 19:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nothing can be done to stop the shouting.<\/p>\n If every tongue were stilled<\/p>\n The noise would still continue.<\/p>\n The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus\u2019s insistence that \u2018There is not one of you\/ Who cannot win the kingdom;\/ The slow, the suffering,\/ The quick, the dead\u2019 contrasts with Joseph<\/em>\u2019s facile, aleatory version of this quoted above, \u2018Anyone from anywhere can make it\/ If they get a lucky break\u2019. The trial before Pilate is based closely on John 18 and 19. Pilate asks:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You have been brought here<\/p>\n Manacled, beaten by your own people.<\/p>\n Do you have the first idea why you deserve it?\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n Where is your kingdom?<\/p>\n Look at me. Am I a Jew? \u2026<\/p>\n But what is truth?<\/p>\n Is truth a changing law?<\/p>\n We both have truths.<\/p>\n Are mine the same as yours?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, the ending of this scene is interpolated. Enraged by sympathetic anguish, Pilate screams:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don’t let me stop your great self-destruction<\/p>\n Die if you want to, you misguided martyr!<\/p>\n I wash my hands of your demolition<\/p>\n Die if you want to, you innocent puppet!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Indeed, it is generally with characters other than Jesus than most invention is (perforce) used. The hearing before Herod is reasonably extrapolated from its one mention in Luke 23: 8-11:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Prove to me that you’re divine<\/p>\n change my water into wine \u2026<\/p>\n Prove to me that you’re no fool<\/p>\n walk across my swimming pool\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n I only ask what I’d ask any superstar<\/p>\n What is it that you have got that puts you where you are?<\/p>\n I am waiting, yes I’m a captive fan.<\/p>\n I’m dying to be shown that you are not just any man.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pilate\u2019s wife\u2019s dream concerning Jesus (Matthew 27: 19) is transferred to Pilate. Other scenes are invented: Jesus is overwhelmed by lepers; Mary Magdalene is given a conflicted love for Jesus; the obscure apostle Simon the Zealot becomes an anti-Roman propagandist whom Jesus disappoints; we see the high priests deciding to destroy Jesus, and Mary Magdalene and Peter, after the latter has denied Jesus, unite in asking \u2018Could We Start Again, Please?\u2019 The major addition is the characterisation of Judas. In Luke 22: 3, Satan simply enters him just before he betrays Christ, but Jesus <\/em>builds an entire critique of Christ on Judas\u2019s criticism regarding the perfume incident in John 12: for hypocrisy, overreach, endangering himself and his followers, and megalomania \u2013 in short, cultishness. He opens the musical by telling Jesus:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u2019ve started to believe<\/p>\n The things they say of you.<\/p>\n You really do believe<\/p>\n This talk of God is true \u2026<\/p>\n You\u2019ve begun to matter more<\/p>\n Than the things you say.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He is often described as the musical\u2019s narrator, but it would be more accurate simply to describe him as its antagonist. He is in better faith than the Priests and the bloodthirsty crowd, and has better arguments, but the best he and the musical can level at Christ is not vindicated. He is forgiven and is therefore not (as he feared) \u2018Damned For all Time\u2019. When suicidal, he takes over Mary\u2019s song \u2018I Don\u2019t Know How to Love Him\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This musical \u2013 as has been insufficiently recognised – meditates on several topics with considerable profundity. One is the nature of stardom and discipleship. It implies that youngsters bopping around in the desert after their guru are closer in spirit to Christ\u2019s chosen followers than the starched practitioners of those sober, ritualistic or self-lacerating forms of Christian worship that have been pursued over the intervening centuries. We are forced to reflect on whom we worship today, and why: the line \u2018Hey JC, JC won\u2019t you smile at me?\u2019 has striking contemporary resonance. That some individuals who attract worship do not desire it would later be explored in comic mode in Monty Python\u2019s 1979 The Life of Brian<\/em>, but it had already been explored in tragic mode in Jesus<\/em>. Whereas in Joseph\u00a0<\/em>there is no sense that Joseph does not\u00a0<\/em>want to \u2018become a star \u2026 be famous \u2026\u00a0 be a big success\u2019, Jesus refuses the glorification offered by Simon Zealotes:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Christ, what more do you need to convince you Jesus responds that his followers don\u2019t understand what power and glory are, and that \u2018To conquer death, you only have to die.\/ You only have to die.\u2019 According with this difference, it is Joseph\u00a0<\/em>not Jesus <\/em>that tends to be a star vehicle, most recently for Jason Donovan and Sheridan Smith. There are no such names in the current Jesus<\/em>, and it is striking that for many of the original Broadway and film cast members, it is principally for this musical that they are remembered. There was therefore particular plangency in the decision of Jesus<\/em>\u2019s director Timothy Sheaderto replace the fake blood usually used in the scourging scene by gold glitter. The cast take it in turns to slap him, each time turning a new area of his flesh to gold. Rather than presaging the use of gold in centuries of church furnishings, let alone in the creation of an idol such as the golden calf, this seemed to be a metaphor for the best kind of enduring fame, which every blow of his scourging helped him to win. It also inverted the base use of precious metals stressed in this production by the fact that Judas\u2019s hands become tainted by silver glitter once he has accepted the blood money.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The musical makes much metatheatrical reflection on role-playing, both fixed (neither Jesus nor the actor who plays him can deviate from the part written for them) and fungible (the chorus of apostles and their wives becomes the mob that calls for Jesus\u2019s crucifixion). This is heightened by the film, which opens with the cast and crew arriving on set in the Israeli desert. They leap out of their van and start handing costume helmets, guns, and Roman standards from its roof; at the point when the Overture corresponds to the scene of the flagellation, the cross is lifted up from the roof and passed between many hands. When the Overture reaches \u2018Superstar\u2019, the actor playing Jesus suddenly appears, robed for his part. By the end of the Overture, everyone is standing on the ancient set, ready to begin. The whole has the feeling of something improbable; a zany adventure, not necessarily a good idea, but entered upon with much goodwill. At the same time, like the Mass, it is also palpably the re-enactment of a miracle \u2013 be that only the miracle of the story\u2019s survival into the present.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the resurrected Judas asks Jesus:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why\u2019d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?<\/p>\n If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation;<\/p>\n Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication<\/p>\n <\/p>\n the unspoken irony is that Jesus has reached the whole world, as Judas \u2013 who is singing in the present \u2013 should know. In Jesus of Montreal<\/em>, a 1989 Canadian film reworking of Christ Recrucified<\/em>, a court psychiatrist (aka Herod) asks the actor playing Jesus (who has just overturned the cameras at an audition for a beer advert) whether he is not resentful that his acting career has been restricted by his birth in such an obscure place, and not, for example, New York; the irony is the same. Perhaps, however, Judas is speculating that 1970 would have been a better <\/em>time for the first coming. As it is, the musical, not its hero, is reaching the \u2018whole nation\u2019 \u2013 unless the latter is doing so through the former. The Apostles at \u2018The Last Supper\u2019, however, are at least wise to project as follows:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Always hoped that I\u2019d be an apostle;<\/p>\n Knew that I would make it if I tried.<\/p>\n Then when we retire, we can write the Gospels,<\/p>\n So they\u2019ll still talk about us when we\u2019ve died.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The fact that the film is shot at the ancient Nabatean ruin of Avdat furthers these reflections on time. At the time of Christ this ruin was a Temple to Oboda, a deified Nabatean king; the Romans did not occupy this part of Palestine until 106 AD. Since then the worship of Oboda has died – sic transit <\/em>comes to mind, as it does when the actor playing Pilate picks his way with his Roman standard across the ruins to face Jesus – but the Nabateans became Christians during the Byzantine period, and many Christians live in that part of South Israel today.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The musical raises, if not answers, the major questions of Christian ontology. The title song asks:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Judas adds during one of the verses:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tell me what you think about your friends at the top. <\/p>\n The last two questions are answered in the affirmative by the musical itself; the others are for the audience to decide. The ending\u2019s uncertainty is emphasised by the fact that \u2018Superstar\u2019 comes before the crucifixion. It affirms, in advance of the event, that Jesus will in some sense survive it, but all that follows the crucifixion is an instrumental piece (to the same tune as \u2018Gethsemane\u2019) cryptically entitled \u2018John 19: 41\u2019 (\u2018Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.\u2019) Individual productions perforce nudge the interpretation in one direction or another (and will then be judged against people\u2019s own beliefs; the musical was at one point banned in South Africa as irreligious, and in Soviet Hungary as religious). The Barbican production has the Jesus actor being helped down from the cross and then sitting thoughtfully at the side of the stage, until the on-stage lights are switched off. In the Regent\u2019s Park production it was of course God or nature that gradually dimmed the house lights over the course of the evening\u2019s show. The film ends with the cast and crew returning to their bus. Just before driving off, the actors who have played Mary Magdalene and Judas look hard at the horizon. There they have left the cross in place. Now, against the setting sun, it is empty. The actor playing Jesus has not returned to the bus, but in the final shot we see a shepherd and his flock moving across the horizon. What is moving is less the shepherd (a slightly corny device, because incredible that a cast member would thus abscond) than the fact that the cross has been left on location (more plausible), thereby changing its ontology from prop to feature of the landscape, and restoring it closer to its original place and role. The grandeur of the Israeli landscape does not (as one contemporary review of the film claimed) condemn the musical, but rather amplifies it. The puppet masters have not put all of their toys away, therefore art is not cleanly folded in on itself and kept apart from life. The cross stands at the intersection of art and reality, and therefore also at that of an evening\u2019s entertainment and the largest truths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article was written for thearticle.com. What follows is my pre-edited draft. The final article may be read here. Thanks are hereby expressed to editors Daniel Johnson and Olivia Utley. JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR\u00a0AND JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT Jesus Christ Superstar [Jesus], Barbican, dir. Timothy Sheader, July-August 2019 Joseph and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[234,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-plays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2346,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions\/2346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBut if you think it, want it, dream it, then it’s real
\nYou are what you feel<\/p>\n
\nStill hesitating
\nAny dream will do<\/p>\n
\nThat you\u2019ve made it, and you\u2019re easily as strong
\nAs the filth from Rome who rape our country<\/p>\n
\nWho are you? What have you sacrificed?
\nJesus Christ Superstar,
\nDo you think you’re what they say you are?<\/p>\n
\nWho\u2019d you think besides yourself is the pick of the crop?
\nBuddha, was he where it\u2019s at? Is he where you are?
\nCould Mohammed move a mountain, or was that just PR?
\nDid you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake, or
\nDid you know your messy death would be a record breaker?<\/p>\n