Jesus Christ Superstar - Regents Park Open Air / Barbican

+1 for seeing it again (again) - saw it both years.
Part of the magic of it for me was the open air experience though. As the summer night drew to darkness seeing the stage come to life with illumination as the productions intensity grew made it a really special experience. Something I'm not sure could be entirely recreated inside a theatre. Still, would love this to do a stint in a central WE house at some point.

edit: ooh yes or a tour!

Wasn’t that Glenn Carter or have I remembered that wrong? I didn’t see that tour, but I did see Glenn play Jesus several times at the Lyceum. Can’t remeber when that was but I think mid to late 90’s?

Get yourself off to the Barbican Theatre next summer where it will play 60 shows...

I enjoyed seeing Declan Bennett, but would really like to see somebody different play Jesus - somebody with a bit more rock,vocally stronger, and capable of hitting the notes first time - perhaps a little less sulky too. I'm delighted to see it return though, and as the Barbican Centre is directly opposite me (as in, ten metres away) I shall expect to spend quite a bit of time there next summer!

I often wonder how popular Jesus Christ Superstar is with younger audiences. I'm juuuuust on the lower age end, I think, of those who would have learned the gospels at school and been more than passingly familiar with the narrative already (and I come from a C of E background which also would have helped loads), but for people who weren't raised in an environment where they could easily lay hands on a bible, I often worry that although the story of JCS is relatively straight-forward, some of the nuances and meanings must be fairly incomprehensible, and good luck working out who the characters all are and what they're up to. ALW and Tim Rice are both British and older than I am so must also coming from similar backgrounds of prior biblical knowledge (hell, Timmy was even born just up the road from me), so how well would they really be able to judge how the story of the show would come across to a complete newbie?

Whiiiiich is a slightly long-winded way of saying that probably *is* a useful content warning for our increasingly secular society. I wouldn't find it at all difficult to believe that there are grown adults of different cultural backgrounds out there who are into musicals but who've never had reason to wonder or learn what the cross symbolism is all about.

(For clarity, fair play to 'em, I'm not saying it's important to know your Matthew from your Luke unless Christianity is personally relevant to your life, I'm just wondering how not having that knowledge can affect your experience with the show.)

I just found him a little lacklustre. For such a titular role he was greatly shadowed by Huntley’s Judas and Caulfield’s Herod.

If you are a Barbican member they are offering a set tour and pre-show talk during the run.

From his twitter it looks like Declan Bennett isn’t doing this again but he is doing a show called Striking 12 at the Union this xmas. Wonder if he’s someone who might be in Waitress?

Quick bump for this.

With the casting discussions about Evita and Joseph it's all been 100% quiet on the JCS front!

Anyone heard any rumours, or is there anyone you'd like to see at the Barbican?