There’s a holy trinity of holy musicals: the sexy one (Jesus Christ Superstar), the cheesy one (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat), and then there’s Godspell, currently playing to sold-out houses at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre under the direction of the company’s new co-artistic directors, Richard Carroll and Victoria Falconer.
Originally debuting in 1971, Godspell is the first musical by Stephen Schwartz, who was perhaps most famous for his second musical, Pippin, until 2003 when Wicked, the musical theatre phenomenon for which Schwartz wrote music and lyrics, opened on Broadway.
Like Pippin, Godspell was created by Schwartz and his fellow drama students at Carnegie Mellon University. Originally subtitled “A musical based upon the gospel according to St Matthew”, the show consists of a series of loose scenes in which a group of players (we don’t know much about them) enact parables as skits and scenes. Jesus is there too, somehow, to share the message of each story. We take a tour through the Gospel, from the Good Samaritan to the Prodigal Son, watching these mysterious people form a common bond through Christian teachings. It’s extremely earnest. Then, in the second act, the play transforms into the last days of Jesus and the crucifixion. It works about as well as you might think, meaning: it doesn’t quite.
But Schwartz has a gift for capturing both the specificity and universality of human emotion in easy melodies and straightforward imagery, and his folk-inflected 1970s pop has kept this dated and deeply uncool musical surprisingly, stubbornly, alive. Day by Day, one of the show’s most well-known tracks, even reached the US Billboard Top 20 in 1972, and it’s still a pleasant listen now.
Carroll’s production is set in what looks to be a LGBTQ+ community bar (Emma White’s set is festooned with rainbow flags, the Progress Pride Flag hanging proudly on a wall) and features a female Jesus (Billie Palin, who sings like an angel). But Carroll can’t quite commit to the show’s religious core. Every time Jesus delivers a commandment, Palin is directed with a knowing or mocking twist to throw the phrasing away, as though embarrassed by the holiness. That’s fair; in a queer-coded space with a diverse cast, it’s easy to remember not all people have been included in the church’s good word. In the inner workings of a musical about celebrating that word, however, this direction falls flat.
This isn’t to say that musical adaptations of religious texts can’t interrogate, subvert or challenge. But for a new interpretation to work, there needs to be a level of deep, if not sincere, engagement with the source. A successful example is Peaches Christ Superstar, where the queer performance artist performs the entire show solo while interrogating the musical itself.
Carroll’s Godspell spends so much time apologising for or deflecting from the musical’s most directly biblical quotes and aspects that it isn’t able to show how a community can come together to care for each other. The ensemble don’t have clearly telegraphed individual motivations or relationships, which means that even when they all join in recreating parables, we don’t see how or why this is the moment they’re able to let go and let God in, as it were.
Carroll’s work as a musical theatre director favours the comic and bold over the sweet and subtle, and the show is pitched so heavily in the direction of the former that it feels empty without the latter; it felt a little like everyone was wishing they could rip up the assignment and rewrite it themselves. You can’t help but wish for that too.
But there is still a beating heart in this Godspell, and it’s the music. Falconer is a musical bowerbird, collecting motifs, references and subgenres to create unexpected moments in both new and well-established scores (she will often include both theremin and saw in her soundscapes, as she does here). Under her direction, Godspell is transformed into a joyful, expansive rock-cabaret, with elements of disco and contemporary pop.
When the ensemble comes together for a number, it’s almost always lovely. Their performances grow stronger when they’re singing, perhaps because Schwartz’s songs have clear internal logic and well-marked journeys. In song, the actors connect with the material and the message, and for just a second, your heart could melt. It’s just a shame about all the rest.
Godspell is on at Hayes Theatre until 6 November.
