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| Jeff Fenholt (center), Ben Vereen (right) |
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| Jeff Fenholt. |
Without a doubt the most
controversial musical of its time, Jesus
Christ Superstar came to Broadway after achieving the hitherto unheard-of
feat of selling over 3.5 million albums in the United States—despite its failure, ironically, in England—and racking up a $1 million dollar advance
sale. Touring concert versions, authorized and unauthorized, were already
earning huge profits all over the USA when director Tom O’Horgan conceived and
directed its super-spectacular New York production. Following its Broadway
success (with audiences, if not critics), a new album was made of O’Horgan’s
version.
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
rock opera retelling of the familiar Gospel story of the last seven days in the
life of Jesus (Jeff Fenholt) infuriated some religious groups and delighted
others, Christian and Jewish, for its idiosyncratic view of Jesus as a
non-divine human being, a man with sexual and other earthly passions. Mary
Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) thus was portrayed as Jesus’s romantic interest. This
Jesus was a hippie-like radical who was a revolutionary thorn in the
Establishment’s side, and had to be disposed of for political reasons. Judas
(Ben Vereen) was seen as a self-sacrificial accomplice in Christ’s downfall, a
friend who betrayed Christ “not for the money but because he suspects that
Jesus can no longer control the revolution he has started and therefore wants
to be caught and killed,” as Henry Hewes saw it. Many thought Judas came off as
more sympathetic than Jesus Christ himself.
The Jewish priests were viewed by
important Jewish religious groups as an anti-Semitic throwback to the
pre-Ecumenical Council of the Vatican II period, when the church held the Jews
responsible for Jesus’s death. Some critics thought the religious issues were
presented equivocally and with many contradictions, but Stanley Kauffmann
rejected the religious issues entirely, saying that they were without weight and
only an excuse for a rock musical whose value lay in whatever entertainment it
could provide.
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| Yvonne Elliman, Jeff Fenholt. |
These entertainment aspects were widely reviled, especially the gargantuan spectacle into which O’Horgan had turned the show. The music, described by John Simon as “medium-hard rock with overtones of an older Broadway idiom” was accepted by very few. Some, like Jack Kroll, thought the music and lyrics “skillful,” with “a genuine emotional accuracy,” but others, like Clive” Barnes, found the score too eclectic, running “so many gamuts it almost becomes a musical cartel,” the effect being “pleasant, although unmemorable.”
“Doggerel” was a word used by several to describe Tim
Rice’s lyrics, while “pedestrian” also found its way into some reviews. Even
those who liked these elements were apt to find them over-simplified and hard
to decipher. Needless to say, the score of Jesus
Christ Superstar, whatever its artistic merits, has outlived its early critical
scorn and become enormously popular and loved worldwide, prompting countless
revivals (not to mention movie and TV adaptations) that continue to this day.
Songs like “What’s the Buzz,” “Everything’s All Right,” “Hosanna,” “I Don’t
Know How to Love Him,” and “Superstar” are familiar to millions who have never
even seen a production of the show.
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| Jeff Fenholt,Alan Braunstein, Paul Ainsley, Michael Meadows. |
O’Horgan’s grandiose conception met
with great hostility. It was felt that he had obscured with extraneous visual
effects what might have been far more compelling minus its potpourri of
theatricalist trappings. “Not only does the ocular dazzle distract from the
story,” wrote Dick Brukenfeld, “but the story, as told here, exerts little dramatic
pull.” Walter Kerr noted of the unadorned original, “for me it works” as a
down-to-earth, universal revelation of Christ’s passion, but in O’Horgan’s
hands it became, for this critic, a crude, vulgar, tasteless travesty, filled
with unnecessary intrusions of low camp and theatrical gigantism. Clive Barnes described
it as “like one’s first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all
uninteresting, but somewhat uninspiring and of minimal artistic value.”
Using a huge company of 40 actors
and 35 pit musicians, the production employed numerous surprising devices,
including having Judas played by a scantily clad Black actor and Herod (Paul
Ainsley) as a flaming drag queen on high platform shoes. Hydraulic elevators
moved actors and sets, actors on trapezes flew in and out, Biblical characters
wore flashy, sequined costumes, and hand mics were disguised as flowers, their
wires made to look like ropes. Jack Kroll called it “one of the most amazing
and complicated media events of the media age.” Brendan Gill contended that O’Horgan’s
Superstar was a “pseudo-barbaric,
self-aggrandizing production,” and John Simon observed that the show offered a
panoply of “bloated, eye-and-ear-boggling mindlessness and tawdriness.”
The standout performance was that of
newcomer Ben Vereen, of whom Harold Clurman wrote that “he possesses
inexhaustible energy and physical suppleness, and sings with strong dramatic
intention.”
Naturally, the show was nominated
for awards but it actually won very few. Its score was nominated for a Tony,
Webber won the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Composer (this one stuck),
Vereen was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Musical, Robin Wagner got a
Tony nomination for his set, Jules Fisher got one for his lights, and Randy
Barcelo for his costumes.
