An inspired decision to stage Jesus Christ Superstar in a summer theatre in Regent’s Park. The action takes place outdoors, in balmy climes, so the atmosphere is ideal for Rice and Lloyd Webber’s finest show. The songbook bursts with melodic inventiveness, and the score blithely rips apart the conventions of musical theatre and remakes them afresh. Lloyd Webber finds two contemporary registers and switches between them constantly: first the eerie, unhinged menace of late-1960s heavy rock, and secondly the sweet, escapist loveliness of 1970s pop. The transitions from blunt savagery to pure sugar sometimes occur with gunshot abruptness, on a single note.
Tim Rice’s lyrical complexity and dramatic assurance are evident from the very first salvo delivered by a jealous but hard-headed Judas pleading with Jesus to restrain the dangerous adulation of his followers. The superb Tyrone Huntley (Judas) has the authentic howl of a rock star and his angry urchin’s features are full of despairing recrimination.
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