(1973) Magnificent music from Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice, co-producer and director Norman Jewison, who wrote the screenplay with Melvyn Bragg, sets the events in a temple ruins surrounded by the Israeli desert as a multiracial troupe of actors arrive in a bus to perform the rock opera.

"Don't you get me wrong - I only want to know." Modern props - including guns, boots, postcards, tanks, and jets - suggest relevance of the 2000-year-old Biblical incidents to the present. "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who are you? What have you sacrificed?" The costumes, men sporting long hair, beards, and bare chests, the dancing and singing brought to mind Hair. "Jesus Christ Superstar, Do you think you're what they say you are?"

Apart from the other apostles ("What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happenin'") and Jesus (Ted Neeley), Judas Iscariot (Carl Anderson), recalling the beginning ("No talk of God then"), considers "Where we all soon will be."

The baritone high priest Caiaphas (Bob Bingham) with his council in flowing black capes and big headdresses, perched like crows on scaffolding, complaining about the mob ("half-witted fans") surrounding Jesus below, caws: "We need a more permanent solution to our problem." As the crowd shouts enthusiastically its ardor for their charismatic idol - "Christ, you know I love you. Did you see I waved? I believe in you and God, so tell me that I'm saved!" - Simon Zealotes (Larry T. Marshall) demands more militancy from a messiah, "a touch of hate at Rome."

While Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) soothes Jesus with her song, "Everything's all right," Judas criticizes Jesus for including a prostitute among the apostles. Unlike the Gospels of Luke, Matthew, and John, in which Jesus is portrayed largely as compassionate and imperturbable, here as in the Gospel of Mark the Son of Man has an outburst of rage (in the Temple, overturning tables where he finds "a house of prayer" turned into "a den of thieves") and exasperation, overwhelmed by demands for healing ("Don't crowd me! Leave me alone!").

Mary then sings "I don't know how to love him…. He's a man, he's just a man," which Judas will later reprise: "I don't know why he moves me…. He scares me so." Going to Caiaphas, Judas ("I really didn't come here on my own accord") conspires to betray the Galilean to the Jewish authorities.

Elsewhere the apostles are thinking of themselves: "Look at all my trials and tribulations … Always hoped that I'd be an apostle. Knew that I could make it if I tried. Then when we retire we can write the gospels, so they'll still talk about us when we've died." The Last Supper is depicted as a picnic in an orchard during which Jesus says to his disciples: "For all you care this wine could be my blood. For all you care this bread could be my body." When Jesus foretells, "One of you denies me. One of you betrays me," unlike the others ("Not I! Who would? Impossible!"), Judas replies: "Cut out the dramatics! You know very well who … What if I just stayed here and ruined your ambition?"

In the garden of Gethsemane the opera further follows Mark's version of the story with Jesus praying in anguish while the apostles sleep: "Take this cup away from me for I don't want to taste its poison…. I'm not as sure as when we started. Then I was inspired. Now I'm sad and tired…. Can you show me now that I would not be killed in vain? Show me just a little of your omnipresent brain." Images of famous artworks of the crucifixion appear. "Why then am I scared to finish what I started? What you started - I didn't start it."

Following the kiss and arrest, the mob crowds around Jesus ("What would you say were your big mistakes?... You'll escape in the final reel") on his way to Caiaphas: "You say you're the Son of God in all your handouts - well, is it true?" Jesus answers: "That's what you say." Then again before Pontius Pilate (Barry Dennen): "We all know that you are news - but are you king, King of the Jews?" Jesus: "Your words, not mine." Declaring him to be another's case, Pilate sends Jesus off to face King Herod (Josh Mostel): "And now I understand you're God, at least that's what you've said…. Prove to me that you're divine - change my water into wine … walk across my swimming pool."

Returned to Pilate, the Roman administrator attempts to placate the angry mob ("Crucify him!") by having Jesus lashed 39 times before acceding to their demands: "I wash my hands of your demolition."

Judas, having hanged himself ("God! I'll never know why you chose me for your crime"), reappears in angelic form: "Why'd you choose such a backward time and such a strange land? Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication." Following the stark, ambiguous conclusion in the Gospel of Mark (the first authorship of the four scriptural testaments of Christ's passion), Jesus is mocked and ridiculed as he is raised upon the cross between two crucified thieves.

His plea of abandonment as recorded by Mark - "My God, my God, why have you forgotten me?" - are somewhat leavened, first by "God forgive them - they know not what they are doing" and afterward, finally by "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," both from Luke. Can inexplicable suffering be the path to redemption?

The actors somberly, joylessly climb back into the bus, leaving behind a lone, empty cross against a sunset; the end credits roll silently.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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