In October 2024, Time Out London was totally honest: “There was only the smallest window in history when making a rock musical about Jesus was a viable prospect,” and yet composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice “smashed it.” The odds against “Jesus Christ Superstar,” now onstage at The Rev, were many. In his opening night curtain speech—and in an earlier interview with syracuse.com—director Donald Rice explained that the rock opera was written as a concept album. He believes its avant-garde sound would have been stripped away had it begun as a staged musical.
The two men—unknown at the time—could not find backers. “It was their great good fortune that no one wanted to put it on the stage, because then they basically just wrote a sensational album.” Released in October 1970, the double album went gold in less than three weeks with over a million dollars in sales. The stage musical opened a year later on Broadway in 1971.
Everyone knows the story of Jesus, and most everyone recognizes Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, dubbed by History.com as “the most successful composer-lyricist team in modern theater history.” Donald Rice knows their extraordinary collab better than most—he’s Tim Rice’s son. And in directing the Rev’s current production, he brings to “Jesus Christ Superstar” the care, knowledge, and skill of a museum conservator, restoring a piece of art that—in its tens of thousands of performances worldwide—has acquired excess and extravagance, at times obscuring its clean simplicity and everyday human emotion. The REV Theatre Company’s production of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, running May 28-June 17 at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Auburn.Ron Heerkens, Jr. Rice has stripped away the build-up and returned the sung-through musical to an elegant-in-its-spareness minimalism.
This is a tight and taut show in which every element—acting and singing, musical direction and choreography, staging and setting, lighting and costuming—plays a distinct role in the storytelling. Shifts in color herald shifts in action and mood, and the fluid beauty of the first act darkens into the growing brutality of the second act, in which blood and neon starkly amplify the horror. More than any other show in recent memory, this one uses costuming to telegraph character through strong first impressions; it’s a conduit that rewards attentive patrons with an upfront understanding of specific individuals’ interiority as well as their visible actions.
This production defies tropes with Ethan Hardy Benson in the title role as a clean-shaven Jesus with curly short hair; he’s J. Crew tropical wearing a white unbuttoned collarless shirt and loose linen pants with hems folded to a mid-calf cuff. Benson looks like an entrepreneur fresh from a TED talk, giving off the kind of serene vibes that make strangers gravitate toward him at parties.
He’s a dove of peace, the antithesis of toxic masculinity, and when this gentle surety begins to fracture, it’s all the more crushing to witness. Benson’s embodiment of suffering will make you go fetal with empathy. Witnessing his physical performance is like watching a theatrical marathon—I flinched with each lash and blow.
(Give this man a warm bath with Epsom salts after all those tensed muscles and knotted contortions—he deserves it.) Austin Turner’s Judas is lean, rangy, and masks his true height, never standing tall; there’s always the suggestion of a hunch, as if he’s burdened by his conflicted feelings about Jesus. With his shaved head and long limbs, he reads like the kid persecuted on the playground during childhood; despite finding his friend group as an adult, he nevertheless harbors buried resentment.
Wearing tight pale blue jeans, a faux light blue leather jacket with zippers and snaps atop a tank with just a hint of moss green, he’s an outsider amongst his loose cotton-costumed crowd wearing barely-there color. His blue is a clue for what lies ahead, and his own agony over his betrayal of Jesus is a powerfully-enacted moment of Judas reaping what he sows. As Mary, Sophie Madorsky looks like a boho influencer taking a break from her plants and her van life social media feed, her contemporary sensibilities suggested by her cotton halter ombre dress dipped in desert-rose under a knotted macrame bodice terminating in loose strands for the skirt.
She’s a woman buffeted by public opinion who has found a respite from seeking constant likes under the guidance of Jesus. Her signature song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” comes from this same quiet place of knowing; instead of going pop-star huge, she leans into a softer coffee-house folk sound. As expected, the bad guys wear long black tunics, black eyeliner, and jackboot-inspired footwear, but there’s the addition of the slightest hint of moneyed green to indicate that filthy lucre motivates them.
Jamari Darling’s Caiaphas sports gold-chain-draped shoulders on his long tunic, but it’s his gun-show arms sleeved in green fishnet that add sex and menace to the mix. Combined with his subsonic low voice, the effect is visceral. Jamari Darling play Caiaphas in The REV Theatre Company’s production of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, running May 28-June 17 at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Auburn.Ron Heerkens Jr. As Annas, Syracuse University alum Franco Tomaino is an imposing sidekick, his green leggings peeking out with every forceful stride.
David Sattler’s Pilate is nuanced in his evil, more mastermind than thug, with an uprightness that suggests his power comes from breaking others. J’Quay Gibbs plays a non-binary Herod as shimmering psychotic, their Vegas-showy number a showstopper that launches the violent end game ahead. Alexander Tom’s musical direction has a pureness to its sound.
Conducting a seven-person pit, instead of burying instruments in overpowering clusters, he allows the clear notes of electric guitar, keyboard, woodwinds and horns to complement the action onstage. Phil Colgan’s choreography reflects the active expression of groups in celebration and conflict, community and confusion; it’s less dance, more honest movement. Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s scenic design utilizes a semicircle of scaffolding, a center set of stairs, and draping to create a flexible space in which environments are overlaid; it’s a Rent/Hamilton approach which adds to the fresh feel of this production.
José Santiago’s lighting design carries much of the weight of shaping spaces and establishing mood; from starbursts to glaring single spots, the flickering of torches or the fierce flat illumination of the desert sun, the transitions are vividly accomplished. And finally, as described earlier, costume designer Tiffany Howard’s work is a character study on how what we wear reveals who we are. From the faded pastels of Jesus’s followers in the opening scene to their saturated blue/grey/black apparel in the moment of his betrayal, color tells the story in a musical that has no spoken words but communicates clearly nonetheless.
I’m old enough to remember when Jesus Christ Superstar the album was part of the music curriculum when I attended school in New Hartford, NY; back then, as a recent Jewish transplant from New York City, I dreaded those weeks. My husband, who sat next to me opening night and grew up Roman Catholic near Schenectady, was raised on the album. He’d never seen the musical before; I’d seen it three times earlier.
As we exited the theater, I told him, “You have no idea how lucky you are that this was your first time. This is an exceptional production. The purest one I’ve ever seen.” Once I might have argued, “not my story, not my faith, not my belief system,” but regardless of your background, “Jesus Christ Superstar” is the musical equivalent of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” While the latter’s restoration has been the subject of criticism and debate, Donald Rice’s direction of his father’s first hit—now regarded as the second-greatest musical (behind Evita) of the Lloyd Webber-Rice era—is lovingly and splendidly done.
The buzz is at The Rev, and what’s happening is a rare opportunity to see musical theater conservatorship—a moving restoration of a classic for the ages. Show details What: “Jesus Christ Superstar” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice Where: The Rev Theatre Company at the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, Emerson Park, Auburn When seen: Opening night May 28 Length of performance: 1 hours 45 minutes including a 15-minute intermission Family guide: Age 12 and up Runs through: June 17 Information: (315) 255-1785, therevtheatre.com
