Got free tickets otherwise I would not have bothered. What a great show and had to copy the Times review- it is behind a pay wall
It’s big, it’s loud, it’s great entertainment. And if it lacks finesse now and then, this arena staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s breakthrough musical from 1970 makes up for that in sheer welly.
The Apostles burst on to the stone steps of Mark Fisher’s stage dressed as modern-day urban protesters. Some do acrobatics, one wears a Ramones T-shirt, one lobs a petrol bomb; yeah, it’s half-Occupy, half-Stomp, but the staging follows the conceit through and you know that Laurence Connor’s production is going to give a huge space a show to match.
The score, Lloyd Webber’s rockiest, is played with due respect to the original album, give or take some alarmingly loud techno bass in The Temple. And if the band sound as if they are turned up to 11 during the first half, the volume settles down in a superior second half. In the meantime there are graphics of tweets during What’s the Buzz, pharisees in business suits, Romans as riot police, tattoos and dreadlocks for Tim Minchin’s Judas Iscariot and Mel C’s Mary Magdalene.
Minchin, the Australian comedian who wrote the songs for Matilda the Musical, gives Judas a compellingly conflicted air. And though he could perhaps do with looking up a bit more, his needly vocals and presence power the show.
Ben Forster won the role of Jesus through Lloyd Webber’s television talent contest Superstar. Even allowing for Jesus’s self-doubt, Forster has a diffidence about him that isn’t very messianic. But such doubts become cavils when you hear him sing, never better than when he hits the high notes in Gethsemane as Jesus considers his fate. The crowd, quite rightly, goes nuts.
He also contrasts well with Minchin and Chisholm on the gorgeousEverything’s Alright. The former Spice Girl, in her white dress and leather jacket, sings beautifully, holding on to her own singing style yet always serving the story. As does Chris Moyles, who knows just how to sell his comedy number as King Herod. This Herod is a brash talk-show host asking viewers to text in their views (“Lord or Fraud?”) in a blatantly fixed poll. Playing to the cameras that project his and everyone else’s performances on to the giant screen upstage, he does a great job.
The show gets the right balance between the spectacular, the jokey and the sincere. When the stage is bathed in red light, funk-rock riffs ring out and Judas rises the staircase to hang himself, it’s sheer showmanship — but Minchin’s performance means that it really counts for something, too. Likewise, when Forster is crucified on a lighting rig, it’s ingenious but not facetious. The performances from the well-choreographed supporting cast are fine throughout. Honestly, it’s enough to give rock opera a good name.
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