Who Are You, Jesus Christ?

Broadway is turning into a religious institution.  Currently playing are The Book of Mormon, Godspell, and (more central to the subject of this post) Jesus Christ Superstar.  I love Superstar.  It's probably one of my favorite musicals.  Not that I've ever seen it before, I just love the music, which is - as it turns out - the entire show.  Jesus Christ Superstar is part rock opera and all awesome.  If you get the chance, I strongly encourage you to listen to "Gethsemane" from the 1971 original Broadway Cast Recording; there's this one note that Jesus hits that will make your brain melt with amazement.  What's especially cool about this production is that the cast is almost entirely comprised of Canadian no-names.  The show came down from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and it represents the festival very well.  The cast does a great job with their parts and, more importantly, you can hear every word.  Full disclosure, the actor who plays Judas has a solo album and I bought it.  His voice is amazing.  With regard to staging (and how can I go an entire blog post without talking about it?), I thought it was really well done.  A few things threw me off at first - most notably the Mad Max/Sontaran styled centurions and the fact that the set does at times seem to swallow the actors - but I really liked what I saw.  I do not know if there is a Tony Award for projection design, but the projection designer for this show deserves major recognition. "Trial & 39 Lashes" and "John 19:41" were both awe-inspiring.

But perhaps more interesting than the details of the show is the subject matter.  It is, after all, a musical about the last six days of the life of Jesus Christ... the man.  Not the son of God.  It's a very interesting proposition: what if Jesus was just a guy who had some nice things to say?  What if he wasn't the son of god?  It's not a new idea.  Thomas Jefferson took all the miracles out of the New Testament and published  The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth as a book of ethics. I think that we can mostly all agree that Jesus didn't say anything too crazy with regard to his ethics.  But you have to admit, he was also kind of morbid.  Toward the end he talked about his own death an awful lot.  In the words of Judas in the opening number: "You've begun to matter more than the things you say". To me, the story actually becomes more important if Jesus was just a guy.  A potentially delusional guy depending on whether or not he himself believed he was he son of god, but a guy none the less who was essentially lynched by the people of Judea for spreading kindness and equality.  Once you strip away the myth from the man, I my opinion, he becomes someone worth founding a religion upon...