Australian theatre | The Guardian: There’s a holy trinity of holy musicals: the sexy one (Jesus Christ Superstar), the cheesy one (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat), and then there’s Godspell, currently playing to sold-out houses at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre under the direction of the company’s new co-artistic directors, Richard Carroll and Victoria Falconer.
2 comments:
While I’ve never seen Godspell, I understand the gist of the musical as well as its history. What I think this ciritic did wrong was didn’t understand that this version of the musical was not made for them. Just because something isn’t made for you don’t make it terrible or bad quality. This version was set in a gay bar and obvious geared towards queer audience members. The critic states how it starts earnest and then quickly moves to crucifixion. They also mention how everytime there was something preaching christianity, would have a character mock it. They said that this aspect of this version of the show loses the sense of community between the characters that the show is supposed to nurture because it’s so focused on hating on the preaching. It actually sounds quite interesting to me as someone who enjoys blunt and bold humor. Obviously if I’m going into this play expecting to see a classic version of Godspell, that’s not what I’m going to get, but that doesn’t mean that the version of the show is objectively bad. I think this critic isn’t on the side of society that finds this type of commentary as relatable as the audience I believe it was made for.
I think it is important to state that there are some factual inaccuracies about how Stephen Schwartz is connected to this musical, namely that he created it at Carnegie Mellon University. John-Michael Tebelak did create the initial production at CMU without Schwartz, but brought Schwartz on later to add better music. The main issue with this review is that it fails to consider that Schwartz himself says that the play is not about Jesus but rather the story of a community coming together because it was written during the Vietnam War. The story of Jesus and the parables surrounding him are simply vehicles to tell this story and an example of such a thing. I would argue that setting this show in a gay bar is a perfect example of how this story should be told because it is a community coming together in a time of crisis. There are still good comments about specific performers and how the ensemble sounds together, but the reviewer seems to not understand the point.
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