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It’s an irony of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s powerhouse 1970 rock opera that the least superstarry thing about it is Jesus. The through-sung score features one belter after another – Heaven on Their Minds, Hosanna, the fanfaric title track. But there’s little narrative (fair enough, we all know the plot), or character. We hear about Jesus’s charisma from others’ say-so but he’s an oddly passive, disgruntled central figure.
This flaw is exacerbated in Tim Sheader’s otherwise thrilling, high-octane, concert-style production by the casting of Sam Ryder. The plucky Eurovision yodeller’s octave-hopping voice could strip paint when it comes to the impassioned high notes but he swallows the quieter passages of songs and his nice-guy disposition sits ill with Jesus’ grumpiness.
I salute Lloyd Webber’s ongoing commitment to revamping his back catalogue, from Jamie Lloyd’s transatlantic Sunset Blvd to a voguing Cats and an immersive Phantom in New York. This includes his entirely legitimate use of eye-catching novelty casting and splitting this production across two of his theatres.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the Broadway and Modern Family star, is playing Herod in early performances at the Palladium, to be followed by Richard Armitage, Boy George, Layton Williams and Julian Clary: the production will then move to Drury Lane before going on tour. Often Herod steals the show with his lone number, but this JCS is filched by Desmonda Cathabel’s stunning Mary Magdalen and Tyrone Huntley’s racked Judas.
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Ryder’s Messiah is unbelievably ripped – I guess this is what’s meant by “muscular Christianity”. With his extensive tattoos, wafty linens, beard and gathered topknot he resembles a charismatic yoga teacher or a ravey cult leader. The latter, to be fair, is how he’s seen by the Roman occupiers.
Sheader’s production, with choreography by Drew McOnie that embraces sinewy undulation and ecstatic abandon, has the bleary, transportive mood of a festival. The ambivalently gendered ensemble, mostly in bejewelled makeup and crop tops, wouldn’t look out of place at Burning Man or Berghain. David Thaxton’s Pilate has his laurels tattoed on his high-fade scalp and SPQR on his bicep. The priests led by Bob Harms’s sepulchral Caiaphas move like a menacing, hieratic cross between Kraftwerk and Lene Lovitch.
This is a ramped-up, amped-up version of the production Sheader and McOnie mounted at Regent’s Park in 2016. Tom Scutt’s set has the large orchestra strung out on a semicircular scaffolding platform on stage with punters penned in below. Slanting across is a huge, toppled crucifix in black perforated metal – initially a catwalk and a runway, it slowly rises during Jesus’s scourging like a bomber taking off.
The conflicted emotions Christ triggers are powerfully realised. Huntley’s Judas seems driven to insanity by the fascination and fury he feels for his leader, to the point where he starts emulating Ryder’s soprano, as if possessed.
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Desmonda Cathabel (sounds like a character from Cats, no?) is a dreamy, heavy-lidded, smitten devotee as Mary Magdalene: her two gorgeous numbers, Everything’s Alright and I Don’t Know How To Love Him, are the evening’s standouts. (The programme includes an essay reconsidering Judas’s reputation. Not so Mary who remains slandered as a prostitute. That’s 1970s musical theatre for you.)
At times the concert vibe borders on the comical. Many of the props are made from microphone stands, from priests’ staffs to soldiers’ spears to the spindly cross to which Jesus is finally attached by a roadie wielding a power drill.
What works stupendously well is the use of glam and glitter and the witty touches. Ferguson’s Herod is attired in gold like a sybaritic sun king, complete with winged crown, and his song is accompanied by a troupe of jiving John the Baptists with their heads resting on bloodied platters.
Huntley’s guilty Judas finds his hands coated in silver paint, like blood, as microphone nooses drop around him. Jesus’s punishment during the song 39 Lashes is meted out with the cast hurling firecracker glitter bombs at his gore-smeared six-pack, which somehow makes it almost as pornographically sadomasochistic as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
All together this is an OTT, aorta-pumping rollick through one of Lloyd Webber and Rice’s strongest musical collaborations, by a team who know that the score and the feel of it are all that matter. Jesus? Schmeesus.
To 5 Sept at the Palladium, then 16 Oct-9 Jan at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, lwtheatres.co.uk
