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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
The Last Supper finds the apostles behaving like blithering fools as usual, drinking wine and dreaming of their post-Gospel immortality. Jesus knows He's doomed and finally tells them the buzz they're incessantly asking for: He's going to be betrayed and denied, and then He'll wind up dead. They act clueless when He asks them to remember Him via the old bread-body, blood-wine analogy, and He blows up at them: "Look at your blank faces. My name will mean nothing 10 minutes after I'm dead." As the tension builds to near-unbearable tautness, Judas screams out his disillusionment, sneering that it would serve Jesus right if he didn't turn Him in after all. But of course, he has no choice.
Once the useless apostles fall asleep, it's time for Jesus' showstopper: his obligatory, if temporary, loss of faith. He howls his doubts to God, whose silence is deafening. The song builds to a bombastic crescendo, but in the end, of course, He acquiesces. He has no choice, either.
Right on cue, Judas shows up with some soldiers and gives his betrayer's kiss. The apostles are ready to kick some ass, but Jesus tells them to chill out. "Why are you obsessed with fighting? Stick to fishing from now on." The once-adoring crowd turns fickle, clamoring for His thoughts and feelings. ("How do you view your coming trial? Have your men proved at all worthwhile?") He doesn't respond, which pisses everybody off.
After Peter's denial, the action jumps to Pontius Pilate, who's unimpressed, and sends Jesus off to be judged by King Herod. He's trotted over to the wacky monarch, who merrily warbles a ragtime ditty, urging Jesus to "rock the cynics" and prove His deity. No dice, dude, so Herod sends Him away with all the petulance of a spoiled toddler.
Judas can't stand the guilt; in a reprise of his earlier "doomed for all time" tune, he belts out his realization that he's "been spattered with innocent blood." His howls are briefly softened when he echoes his own doubts about how to love Him ("When He's cold and dead will He let me be?"), but soon enough he's back in bummersville and kills himself. The (heavenly?) chorus kicks in with a mournful buh-bye: "Poor old Judas. So long, Judas."
The priests demand that Pilate do their dirty work, and reprise an earlier melody ("Hosanna, superstar") into a new, grimmer sentiment ("We need him crucified"). As the music drives the action forward, Pilate finally agrees to have Jesus whipped; guitar riffs ripple and build for 39 lashes, in a distinctly sexual rhythm, as the beat gets faster and faster and faster. While Pilate begs Jesus to speak, to save Himself, the crowd keeps shouting for blood, and Jesus finally speaks. "Everything is fixed and you can't change it." The crowd screams for blood. Finally, Pilate howls out the death order in despair: "Die if you want to, you misguided martyr!"
Stand back, give them room, 'cause it's time for the glitzy title track, the grand finale belted out by Judas in the afterlife, backed up by a soulful female chorus. It's the biggest of this show's showstoppers, designed to get an audience on its feet and swaying like an old-time gospel chorus while Judas poses pesky theological questions like, "Did you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake or did you know your messy death would be a record-breaker?"
As the last note fades, eerie laughter, faint discordant notes and the pounding of nails punctuate Jesus Christ's last few words. It's all over. A subdued echo of the overture brings us full circle. Curtain.
As an art form, rock operas never really took off. The oeuvre came and went during the early '70s and consists, pretty much in its entirety, of the unholy trinity of "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Tommy" and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Just as well, probably.
While "Cats" and "Evita" were still ahead of them, for my money, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's collaboration never again reached the sublime heights of "Jesus Christ Superstar," whose score and lyrics are woven together with near seamless momentum. The pair's abysmal first effort, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," was written while both were still at school. It shows. ("Joseph" is mainly of interest because of how silly Donny Osmond looks in the film version's title role -- and for a few hints of musical themes that anticipate "Jesus Christ Superstar," their next effort.) The phenomenal success of JCS, as fans call it, made millionaires of Webber and Rice and led them, for good or ill, to a long career as theatrical collaborators.
Lord knows there's no credibility to be had in proclaiming one's love for "Jesus Christ Superstar." In most quasi-sophisticated circles, finding JCS anything but pure drivel makes a person suspect, not just as a critic but as a music lover and perhaps as a human being as well. Witness all the terrible reviews the work has gotten over the years: "Bombastic kitsch that [doesn't] rock," said Rolling Stone. "The lyrics are pedestrian and often absurd," harrumphed the Nation. "Flat, pallid, actually pointless," sniffed the New York Post. Infidels, every one.
