I was an Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice groupie as a child, lispingly preaching their gospel to the naysayers at primary school. My zealousness has not waned with age. I publicly jiggled in my seat at Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat just last month.
So it would be a deal-breaker if my boyfriend Frank couldn’t get down with my favourite of the duo’s musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar – specifically the 1973 movie, which depicts a gaggle of hot hippies as the disciples drinking Christ’s Kool-Aid, against a backdrop of Israeli olive groves, mountains and fighter jets.
Frank knows the Superstar tune from the playground – “Jesus Christ, Superstar / Do you think you’re what they say you are?” – but in a “Jingle bells, Batman smells” kind of way.
“I think I get this one confused with Godspell,” he admits.
Jesus Christ Superstar opens with a meta overture where the actors disembark from a dusty bus in Israel’s Negev Desert, dressed in streetwear. Judas, played by the late Carl Anderson, peels off to have an immediate dark night of the soul, pelting along a mountain ridge. Anderson inhabits the role with an incredible physicality, arms flung back in the stance of a crow; his malevolent warning to Jesus, who’s leading his disciples through the valley, is set to a scorching guitar riff that the KLF nicked for their 1990 trance hit What Time Is Love?
“So far this is brilliant,” Frank concedes. Actually, it has peaked, but I don’t tell him that.
Frank’s an actor whose first role was Jesus, but he got fired – at the age of six. Even so, he reckons he’d pick Jesus to play out of all the roles in this film. Here, the credit goes to Daniel Johns lookalike Ted Neeley, the 70s rock screamer who toured the role for decades, as recently as 2015.
What role would I play? Well, the female roles are limited to sex workers with no lines, other than Mary Magdalene, who is way too handwring-y (with apologies to Yvonne Elliman, whose voice, at least, is mighty). So I’d pick Caiaphas, the High Priest. He’s depicted with smouldering intensity by Bob Bingham, roaming around scaffolding in the desert in a BDSM-style chest harness and a bulbous black headpiece. There’s clearly a wind machine just off camera.
“He looks like a camp Russell Brand,” Frank says, ruining decades of fantasies. Equally unwelcome is his assessment of the Roman soldiers, in their shiny helmets, army pants and purple singlets: “This is very Monty Python.”
But Monty Python tended to lampoon uptight types, whereas Jesus Christ Superstar reflects the counterculture of its day. It has been estimated that there were between 2,000 and 3,000 communes in the US in the 60s and 70s, and it’s this guru-driven spirit that inspires the ecstatic cave rave number What’s the Buzz.
Equally energetic is the temple scene, where vendors sell camels, hash, postcards, grenades and machine guns, giving Jesus cause to flip a few tables. Neeley plays Christ with a short fuse, pushing his vocals to the edge over a montage of the most gruesome crucifixion scenes in art history. His chemistry, here, with Anderson, borders on erotic.
Many of the persecution scenes rely on sprechgesang talk-singing that had hitherto been avoided, but was presumably necessary for the fiddly negotiations between the conspiring parties. Amongst them is King Herod (Josh Mostel), a playboy on a makeshift yacht, surrounded by girls in bikinis. Add the dance number and it’s Studio 54 meets Deep Throat meets Benny Hill.
“This is the best part of the whole film,” says Frank – which, as we already know, is incorrect.
Anyway, having done his deal, Judas flees over a flute score – which doesn’t sound that dramatic, but then massive tanks thunder over the horizon and chase him down. Tormented, he winds up swinging from a tree, but in the finale he descends from the heavens as a celestial R&B singer in a white jumpsuit.
He’s part James Brown, but there’s also a hint of Elvis – the latter a trope that Lloyd Webber and Rice have wheeled out before, for Pharaoh in Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. It’s a little tired, but at least it’s one last chance to hear Anderson belt out a number.
The characters melt back into their actor selves and board the bus, minus Neeley. The end credits roll in silence.
“I really liked it, as far as a film that’s a musical goes,” Frank concludes after a respectful pause.
And so, our relationship has survived – unlike that of Lloyd Webber and Rice, whose fractured bond was severed over the 2012 UK TV talent show Superstar, on which Lloyd Webber was a judge. The Guardian called it “a new low for TV talent shows”. Rice went for “tasteless”. But the musical itself is destined for eternal life.
Jesus Christ Superstar is available to rent on iTunes, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
