MUSICAL REVIEW: Jesus Christ Superstar ★★★

Jesus Christ Superstar
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Thursday 7th September 2017

After a sell-out production of this summer in 2016 at the same venue, Tim Rice & Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar has returned to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which for me was a first outing at the beautiful theatre, sadly though the same could not be said for this particular production, though I should have foreseen the situation due to the distaste I have in another Lloyd Webber production, Joseph.

When you look into a production so big of a success as Jesus is at the open air theatre, you are bombarded with beautiful shots of the action on stage melted together perfectly with the scenic lighting which makes the whole feel and excitement to see the show overwhelming, but I think what hinders the production so much is the idea to make it an outdoor production, because on this particular performance which happened to be a matinee, I kept distracting myself away from the action to notice the sheer lack of lighting available in so many scenes. I know I cannot completely fault the production on such a thing as lighting, but the use of such an art form helps discover different settings/locations in a production, something that when placed outside in the sunshine, this performance truly lacks.

To those who aren’t familiar with this production, it is very much a sung through musical, think Les Misérables for example, or 98% of Hamilton; Jesus has no spoken scenes throughout its whole entirety and is always sung. Now that’s ok for the former examples discussed because the characters are clearly developed in the words, but Jesus does not follow this pattern; I still am unsure who half of the characters in this production were, and also Declan Bennett who portrayed Jesus was also so uncharacteristic in the role that he had no standout qualities in his nasal voiced outing of the character. Tyrone Huntley on the hand was a delight to witness on stage and absolutely stole the show in every moment he was present; unlike Bennett, even when he was not visibly on stage but in the wings with the ensemble cast, Huntley oozed with presence as he watched on, with myself constantly distracting myself off on-stage action to witness Huntley in awe.

Overall, though I cannot fully blame the lighting on this occasion due to the matinee situation, Jesus Christ Superstar certainly does not benefit by being an outdoor production due to the vastly open set and some lacking enthusiasm from the majority involved!