It’s World Cup season, and if you heard somebody say it’s a game of two halves, you’d immediately assume they were talking about one of the matches on television, not the latest production of a West End musical.
The current production of Jesus Christ Superstar at the London Palladium is directed by Tim Sheader, who spearheaded the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production of this musical. In fact, the official website says, “The award-winning Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production of Jesus Christ Superstar comes to the West End.” This has left me entirely bamboozled, because I saw that version in the park and was blown away, so much so that we went back to a concert version of it in 2020, when everybody, including actors, had to be socially distanced. Remember those days? This evening, I left the Palladium definitely not feeling that I had been blown away by what I had seen.
The current run is certainly marketed on the star performers playing the roles of Jesus and Herod. Pop-rock and Eurovision star Sam Ryder is Jesus, while the role of Herod is played by a revolving door of big names who drive the price of seats up. Tonight, it was Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson who was playing Herod. PY and I were a bit confused because, when we originally looked at ticket prices for his performances, they were through the roof, and we thought we had booked for one of the less well-known celebrities. Perhaps it’s best we don’t name them. Anyway, it turns out that wasn’t the case. I mention that because it should have added a bit of extra magic to our night. But…
I really don’t know how to describe how I felt about Act One, except that I walked into the interval bar, and when PY asked how I felt, I said it was as flat as a pancake, fully expecting one of our theatre disagreements. Yet we were both of the same opinion. Jesus Christ Superstar opens with much more of a bang, and this was a whimper. For many of the early scenes, Sam Ryder is wandering the stage, looking a bit lost, as if he stumbled into the Palladium by accident. And I really felt the whole of the first act didn’t use his voice to its full extent.
The rotating casting of Herod is, to me, a bit of a gimmick designed to drive up prices. Still, I can see how interesting it is to observe the role played by different people who may attract different audiences to the theatre. So, credit for trying to bring in more diverse audiences. But there’s a second gimmick, and I really don’t understand the point of this one.
In the Regent’s Park production, scaffolding was used as part of the backdrop and scenery and also served as a location for the orchestra. It provided a kind of urban realism and a rock-stadium aesthetic to a quite intense production. It’s been extended at the Palladium to allow for the sale of audience tickets on the stage. Tonight, I felt that this caused two problems.
The first is that, quite frankly, the people on stage are quite distracting. They’re standing, looking at the players, and many of them burst into grins as soon as an actor approaches them. Additionally, the gritty realism provided by the staging and enhanced by the lighting is ruined when an audience member wears bright clothing. A woman in my eyeline was wearing a long, flowing white skirt: a lovely summer outfit for our current weather, but not really in keeping with the atmosphere they’re trying to set. I learned later that on-stage audience members are asked to wear black. Perhaps they should enforce the rule, but I guess that’s pretty hard if you’re raking in the extra cash from the tickets.
The other issue I have with accommodating audience members on stage is that the performance area needs to extend into the auditorium. For this show, it’s more than I’ve ever seen at the Palladium. And that meant a huge swathe of the audience on the upper levels missed fairly extensive parts of the action. PY reckoned he’d lost sight of a third of the action. These tickets were not sold as restricted-view tickets, and many people missed the action for much of the evening.
Now, to me, Act Two was a totally different production. It came alive, and energy surged. Sam Ryder’s voice was properly shown off. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, camping up Herod a little bit, blew a lot of the other performances off the stage, and he’s only there for one song. Can’t knock him for taking the money, especially as he gave a great performance. I’m not sure I’d say the second half came anywhere close to the performance I remember from Regent’s Park, but it definitely improved my overall feeling about the evening.
I still haven’t figured out what the messages with the cast performing with handheld microphones mean, but I’m sure there’s something in it. And I can’t figure out why it switches from what are obviously wireless microphones to ones with enormously long cables. I can see the point of using one of them to tie up Christ; it’s probably some message that I’m not quite getting, but I wish I’d caught that bit.
There are other notable performances. David Thaxton is fantastic as Pontius Pilate; his performance is tremendously conflicted, for example, when he’s not sure what to do with Jesus. And, to be clear, Sam Ryder’s performance of Gethsemane is an example of why he should be so right for the role.
But somehow, it didn’t work for me. Flat seems like a good one-word description. JCS should be more, and the Palladium has all the pieces; they didn’t fit together for me. I can’t put my finger on why this lands differently from Regent’s Park. It can’t be simply because they’re now doing it with a roof.
I wholeheartedly recommend seeing something new instead.
