EmMuster

JESUS THE SUPERSTAR LIVE IN CONCERT

John Legend, Sara Bareilles, 'Hamilton' veteran Brandon Victor Dixon and Alice Cooper headline NBC's Easter Sunday special, performing the 1971 rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

The concert staging focused the scope of the production; it brought it back to its roots—making it more theatrical and less like a live movie. On top of that, the Jesus Christ Superstar team cast incomparable talent from the mainstream music world (i.e. John Legend, Sara Bareilles, Alice Cooper) and from the Broadway world (i.e. Brandon Victor Dixon, Norm Lewis, Jason Tam, Jin Ha). Big names and big talent led to a cast that could handle the demands of the roles and the necessities of the marketing department (though the ratings have yet to come in).

The key to casting Jesus Christ Superstar, the bold-for-its-time musical retelling by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice of the last week in the life of the carpenter's son from Nazareth, is accepting that contrary to the title, it's all about the conflicted villain of the piece. Jesus is a figure too loaded with symbolic weight to allow for much dramatic nuance beyond introspective intensity. And alongside him, Mary Magdalene is a heartsick handmaiden. But Judas Iscariot, the outspoken apostle who sees all too clearly the dangerous threat Jesus poses to the Roman Empire and tries to warn him — before taking steps that would make his name synonymous with betrayal — is the dynamic force that shapes this version of the centuries-old narrative.

So hats off to the producers for making astute choices in the breakdown of seasoned pop performers and stage actors with the dramatic chops to back up their vocal talents. While John Legend's gentle charisma and honeyed pipes made him an affecting Jesus, and Sara Bareilles' soulful way with a song proved a superb fit for Mary, enlisting Brandon Victor Dixon — last seen on Broadway as Aaron Burr in Hamilton — was the crucial piece of casting.

But here's the thing: This was a phenomenally balanced production of Jesus Christ Superstar, in which star power was equaled by depth of feeling and characterization in all the principals. And the immediacy of television, with close-ups capable of bringing us in tight on the performers' faces, gave Jesus and Mary Magdalene a complexity that often is missing from conventional productions.





A slight departure from the formula established in recent years for live television musical events, Superstar was less a studio-bound traditional theatrical production than a fully staged concert as the title suggests, performed at the cavernous Marcy Avenue Armory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Pulsing with kinetic energy right from the overture, the show was a thrilling hybrid of Broadway and arena spectacle, taking the material back to its roots, and you could feel the excitement in the live audience even at home.