Jesus Christ Superstar

The hugely successful Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical was very much of its time and if it offered a good night's live entertainment, Norman Jewison's panoramic screen adaptation does little more than to overwhelm what was originally released as a concept album and which only subsequently found a theatrical form.

The songs, with the exception of the chart hit "I Don't Know How To Love Him" are largely discursive and the realism of the Israeli settings, captured by the widescreen cinematography of Douglas Slocombe sits incongruously with them. The evidently inexperienced cast perform with a self-conscious earnestness that exaggerates the datedness, if not the ridiculousness, of the original Rice/Lloyd Webber concept of Jesus as a rock superstar. Ted Neeley certainly looks like every representation of Jesus you ever seen but in any other respect he is hardly right for the part, being rather bland and vocally undistinguished. Yvonne Elliman has a good voice but delivers her songs with chronically pained expression and only Carl Anderson as Judas manages to combine song, character and performance effectively. And as for the gyrating Flower Power People that we are supposed to accept as disciples (for this is intended to be a serious telling of the Jesus story, not just a lot of song and dance) and their fringed and bedizened costumes, the less said the better.

 

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