you can probably predict how this ends
Apr. 4th, 2018 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitTonight I watched the Jesus Christ Superstar performance that NBC aired on Sunday; I did this mostly because The Exorcist's Ben Daniels was in it, though also because I'd heard that Brandon Victor Dixon was great as Judas, and to me Judas is the most interesting character in any iteration of the Jesus story.
(I was extra inspired to watch it because Ben Daniels posted this tweet with a clip of his sassy little coat-flip that, alas, did not make the broadcast. I wish the critic who dismissed Daniels' Pontius Pilate as too macho and action-hero-y had seen it.)
Anyway, Daniels was great, Dixon was super great, Andrew Lloyd Weber can't write even passable lyrics most of the time, and I was pleasantly surprised, having never seen JCS before, when Judas got to sing a reprise of "I Don't Know How To Love Him." I had spent the entirety of Mary Magdalene's version thinking that Judas should be singing it instead.
I haven't been a believing Christian in many years, but I'm always ridiculously moved by the gospel story. Perhaps especially when it's a troubled, doubting version like this or, far more so, The Last Temptation of Christ, which came closer to making me a Christian again than even my own deliberate attempts to believe ever managed.
Also, and not as unrelatedly as it might seem, I now need to read all the Jesus/Judas slash, and all the Jesus/Pontius Pilate slash.
And to rewatch DAAS's glorious "Jesus Christ Superstar in 5 Minutes":
(I was extra inspired to watch it because Ben Daniels posted this tweet with a clip of his sassy little coat-flip that, alas, did not make the broadcast. I wish the critic who dismissed Daniels' Pontius Pilate as too macho and action-hero-y had seen it.)
Anyway, Daniels was great, Dixon was super great, Andrew Lloyd Weber can't write even passable lyrics most of the time, and I was pleasantly surprised, having never seen JCS before, when Judas got to sing a reprise of "I Don't Know How To Love Him." I had spent the entirety of Mary Magdalene's version thinking that Judas should be singing it instead.
I haven't been a believing Christian in many years, but I'm always ridiculously moved by the gospel story. Perhaps especially when it's a troubled, doubting version like this or, far more so, The Last Temptation of Christ, which came closer to making me a Christian again than even my own deliberate attempts to believe ever managed.
Also, and not as unrelatedly as it might seem, I now need to read all the Jesus/Judas slash, and all the Jesus/Pontius Pilate slash.
And to rewatch DAAS's glorious "Jesus Christ Superstar in 5 Minutes":
no subject
Date: 2018-04-05 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-05 06:06 am (UTC)Then it's good he never wrote one. The lyricist for JCS as well as Evita and Joseph is Tim Rice. Back in ye olde days, he and Llyod Webber were regarded as a bit of a genius duo. Then they broke up, since then Llyod Webber worked with a number of other playwrights and lyricists, and Tim Rice wrote the lyrics for Chess ("One night in Bangkok...") as well as lycris for songs from Elton John, Freddy Mercury etc.
Sorry about the nitpick, but the Rice-Webber musicals really are distinguishable from the Webber-someone else stuff not least by their lyrics. Out of interest, the original Judas, back when JCS wasn't even a musical but a concept album, was Murray Head, brother to Anthony Stewart "Giles" Head, and Ian "Lead singer of Deep Purple" as Jesus.