 |
| Stephen Nathan and company of Godspell |
GODSPELL [Musical/Bible/Religion/Youth] CN/D: John-Michael
Tebelak; M/LY: Stephen Schwartz; SC: the Gospel according to Matthew; C: Susan
Tsu; L: Lowell B. Achziger; P: Edgar Lansbury, Stuart Duncan, Joseph Beruh; T:
Cherry Lane Theatre (OB); 5/17/71-6/13/76 (2,124); Broadhurst Theatre;
6/22/76-9/4/77 (527): total: 2,381
One of several shows that profited enormously from the
stylistic ambience inspired by Hair
as a means of presenting a loosely structured, thematically cohesive program of
rock music and youthful energy infused with a hippie-like aura. Godspell—like Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat—was also an excellent example of Biblical
material being molded into a contemporary format of wide popular appeal to
atheists and worshipers (some, at any rate) alike. It was a sort of rock
minstrel or variety show based on the Passion of Christ as recounted in the
Book of Matthew, an idea conceived as an MFA thesis at Carnegie Tech (as it
then was called) by John-Michael Tebelak.
After an Off-Off Broadway showing at Café La Mama, it
initiated what became the then third-longest run in Off Broadway history. Half
a decade later it moved to Broadway and still had enough spirit to chug along
for another year-plus of performances.
In Godspell, 23-year-old
composer Stephen Schwartz’s music and 22-year-old Tebelak’s conception combined
to effectively tell the familiar Biblical parables and events as expressed
through the vaudeville-like antics of a crew of colorfully dressed and
theatrically made-up flower children. Jesus (Stephen Nathan) was played as a
young, longhair with white clown makeup, a red nose, a heart on his forehead,
and tear-like patterns under his eyes. He wore red suspenders over a Superman
shirt. The uncredited setting, a wire cage against a brick wall, resembled a
school playground, and numerous colorful lighting changes offered visual
variations.
This free-spirited realization of Jesus’s teachings was sung
and danced with vigorous appeal that overcame any amateurishness the critics
detected in the performers. Schwartz’s score, which John Beaufort praised as “expertly
crafted and at times tenderly melodic,” was a stimulating blend of ragtime,
rock, blues, ballads, and folk styles. It helped Schwartz—whose brilliant
career would give birth to megahits like Wicked—go on to become one of the decade’s brightest musical newcomers. On the other hand, Godspell produced only one song that had legs with the public, "Day by Day."
Tebelak’s conception tied songs, dances, narrations, and
sketches together with unflagging creativity, using a wide assortment of
theatrical methods to convey the spiritual meanings. Many contemporary idioms
were incorporated, including what Clive Barnes described as “cartoon—voices,
the jolly rituals of TV panel games, strip shows, minstrel routines, and
conjuring tricks.” Jesus and John the Baptist doing a soft shoe number to
deliver the message of the beam and the mote was a representative example of
the show’s choreographic inventiveness.
This “thing of joy,” as Jerry Tallmer called it, was in
Beaufort’s words, “by turn comic, touching, rambunctious, quietly elegiac, pointedly
moral, and withal innocently pious.” John Simon dubbed it “a frisky,
exhilarating little show, full of ozone and lightheadedness . . . [,] a
crackling musical funhouse.” He was, though, annoyed by the “awkward and anticlimactic
ending,” as was Walter Kerr, who found its seriousness unrelated “to the antic
puppetry of what has gone before it.” Also problematic was the opening sequence
in which the words of such figures as Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Aquinas,
Socrates, Buckminster Fuller, and others were mouthed. And Barnes, the least impressed
major critic, was irked by showing Jesus as a regular guy, “coy and knowing,”
while also being disturbed by the show’s naiveté and tendency toward
platitudes. In fact, he concluded, “I thought the whole thing rather
nauseating.”
Schwartz trundled off with Drama Desk Awards as Most
Promising Composer and Most Promising Lyricist, Tebelak (who died in 1985, not
yet 36) got one as Most Promising Director, and Susan Tsu as Most Promising
Costume Designer. Star Stephen Nathan, who played Jesus (the only actor credited with a specific role,) eventually became a successful TV writer and producer.
