Domenic CAVENDISH
Jeez, it’s joyously uplifting to see London theatre reborn and rocking again! Earlier this summer, Regent’s Park’s alfresco theatre haunt seemed to have succumbed to the same dismal darkness afflicting the West End and elsewhere. But after being forced to shelve the 2020 programme, artistic director Timothy Sheader and co have seized on the go-ahead given to outdoor performances and achieved a minor miracle. Jesus Christ Superstar was first staged here in 2016. Lo and behold, one of his best-loved productions – it won an Olivier – has been resurrected, employing a cast of 25 and a 12-strong band. It’s the biggest live show since lockdown.
Sunshine or no, there’s little pretending it’s business as usual here. What with the temperature checks, sanitiser points, one-way systems and elaborate protocols at the bar, the prevailing impression is of visiting time at the prison. I can’t fully fathom why face masks are de rigueur even when seated, though I suppose they keep your lips from turning blue should it turn a bit cold.
On opening night the heavens did their best to delay the start then stop the show; first drizzle, then something heavier. Cue the laborious mopping of the set: a mighty array of tiered steps, cannibalised from another Andrew Lloyd Webber hit here, last year’s Evita (designer Tom Scutt tweaking the original handiwork of Soutra Gilmour).
To be frank, though, it would have taken a flood of Old Testament proportions to dampen the mood of the theatre-famished audience, sitting in socially distanced “bubbles” but not so that the auditorium felt woefully under-attended. “Inside”, the numbers have shrunk from 1,256 to 390. On a lawn outside, there’s further grassy “seating” (which was very squelchy on Wednesday) for a spaced-out throng to catch the show live on a big screen. I imagine the spirit of Glastonbury might pop up there; if so it’s a response that Sheader’s approach to Superstar, emphasising its core identity as a rock gig, facilitates.
Lloyd Webber has been theatreland’s self-anointed saviour during the pandemic – what with trialling health and safety measures at his venues and gamely volunteering for the Oxford vaccine – but it’s his music (with barely bettered lyrics by Tim Rice) that’s the essential godsend. The raw, vital busy-ness of the score – sacred sounds bedded beside the Sixties’ amplified thrust – serves as a rebuke to our Covid-cowed capital.
Perhaps because of recent upheavals to the usual social order – the rise of rioting too – this incarnation feels unusually attuned to the musical’s contemplation of how the individual – Christ, Judas, even Pilate – relates to the wider group. The dancers are kept on a tight leash choreographically by Drew Mconie to ensure due distancing, but the constraints work wonders, intensifying the feverish rapture by which the disciples are seized as well as the fierce convulsions of the mob.
There are so many nice touches, from the minor synchronised inclinations of the heads of the Pharisees as they overhear the intrusive “hosannas” of JC’S admirers, to the way Judas’s kiss of betrayal is denoted, simply, at one remove by a self-ministered daub of silver paint on Christ’s cheek (Pepe Nufrio singing like an angel). The microphones work overtime as a visual motif, too – mic leads restraining the captured messiah and throttling Iscariot (Ricardo Afonso a boiling sea of inner torment). At the climax a mic stand is tilted to suggest the cross and we see the silhouette of Christ. It’s a potent image of religious transfiguration but, coming after such a long blackout in theatreland, its sheer beauty serves as an inspiring beacon of artistic hope, too.