Here’s an articleon a fresh version.
A friend is watching it now. Says there’s street art, great music and Tim Minchin is a whole new Judas.
Up for 48 hours, so til Easter Sunday.
On Hosannah, so far…
Ben Forster is doing better as Jesus than John Legend did in ABC’s production last year…he can actually emote!
Mel C’s hardly the first name that would have come to mind for Mary Magdalene, but…she does well.
Caiaphas seems to be the only one who’s considering that they were doing this on stage - he’s acting for the cheap seats, while everybody else is going for the cameras. (Even when Jesus is supposed to be playing to the crowd he’s not going big.)
I definitely appreciate Andrew Loyd Weber’s aid in getting through the isolation. Saw Joseph and the (etc) last weekend for the first time and it definitely exceeded my expectations. I thought this would be a stage-based presentation I saw several years ago but never heard of this one before. The energy and staging of tonight’s performance blew me away. I did not think the John Legand version was all that good but this one had me spellbound throughout.
Edit:. Don’t know if I can make it through Cats next weekend but will give it a try.
NOT an Andrew Loyd Weber fan. The first line of one of my favorite songs uses him as the punchline…
Wasn’t wild about Donny Osmond in JATTDC, and I’d rather catch a virus (too soon?) than watch Cats…
But this… It’s minimal, it’s tight, it’s exciting. A friend said best thing he’s seen and likened it to Stop Making Sense.
Hey, that was quite well done – as mentioned by previous posters good energy and staging, some good takes on bringing it to current-day styling.
Not quite new. This is a 2012 production. You can stream it or get the DVD from Amazon.
It’s the Live Arena Tour production from 2012; I hadn’t seen this one before and deeply enjoyed. The depiction of the Christ followers as an Occupy Wall Street mob was very appropriate to that time, as was the Sanhedrin as corporate execs. Really liked Herod as a televangelist and Weber’s comment at the end that it was written to be performed in a stadium show. Looking forward to what he rolls out next week.
One last comment: Now that’s how you sing Gethsemane. A bitter angry tortured prayer howled at someone you don’t even know is listening anymore. Somebody tell John Legend.
The auto-tune and lip-syncing are kind of rough. I would have like to have seen this live.