The story of Judas betraying Jesus is a story as old as time–Jesus foresees Judas’ betrayals, and Peter’s denial, but one perspective has been overlooked: Judas’. Jesus Christ Superstar was written in 1970 by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and it has been nominated for multiple awards such as “Best Original Score” and “Best Revival of a musical” and has performed many tours, shows, and concerts, most recently at the Hollywood Bowl.
On Feb. 18 it was announced that “Jesus Christ Superstar” would be performing at the Hollywood Bowl, and on the same day, it was announced that Cynthia Erivo (of Wicked fame) was portraying the role of Jesus. A month after the original announcement it was announced that Adam Lambert was portraying Judas, Jesus’ betrayer–the announcement was also followed by the announcement of the dates, August 1-3.
Things stayed relatively quiet until July, when more big names were announced as joining the cast. Milo Manheim would be portraying Peter, and Phillipa Soo and Josh Gad (known for portraying Olaf) would join the cast as Mary and King Herod respectively, with a full cast announcement following. At the end of July, Adam Lambert announced a recorded single of the song “Heaven on Their Minds” to be released on streaming services and Vinyl on August 1.
Rehearsals for JCS started in July at the Hollywood United Methodist Church and would stay rather quiet until the 25 of July when a cast member shared a sneak peak of the rehearsals on their Instagram. Then again there was more talk on July 29 with an interview of Milo Manheim–it was confirmed they were in the last week of a three-week rehearsal process.
Unfortunately on July 30 Josh Gad announced on Instagram that he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and would have to be scheduled out of performances unless he tests negative before the performances ended. The next day Gad’s replacement as King Herod was announced as Josh Stamos, in an Instagram caption saying “Well, this weekend just got biblical”. This announcement was responded to with praise and excitement for his performance in the role.
Each of the performers gave a once in a lifetime performance, like Erivo, throughout the whole show she showed her once in a generation talent, specifically in her solo number “Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say)”. Erivo performed the number 3 times and got in total almost 10 minutes of a standing ovation throughout the three performances, which was very deserved for the stellar performance given by her each night.
Other talents throughout the nights were Soo, with her number “I Don’t Know how to Love Him”, a heart warming song about her and Jesus’ relationship which Soo sang beautifully and emotionally. Another standout talent was Manheim with a standout performance in the song “Peter’s Denial” which went viral for his stunning and clear belting he did in the performance.
One other performance that left everyone speechless was Lambert in the role of Judas, From the song “Heaven on their minds” to his acting in “Judas’ Death” people all around the globe, including myself were all blown away by his effortless performance with people on tiktok even saying he makes challenging songs look easy, throughout the show his acting shined through as well, especially at the start of “The Arrest” where without saying words he tells the story perfectly.
One big component to making “Jesus Christ Superstar” happen was social media coverage, from cast announcements being announced on Instagram first, to hype posts from official accounts affiliated with the show and Webber, and then when the show started people started posting clips of different songs, like “Could we start again, please?” or “King Herod’s Song”–without this media coverage by big names and common folk the show would have been a smaller event.
Overall, the event was one of the biggest theatre events in the past several years and brought “Jesus Christ Superstar” back into relevance as well as brought praise to cast and crew alike. The world was reminded of what talent there truly was in the world, and it will be remembered by the theatre community and common folk alike.
