BWW Reviews: A Challenging Collegiate JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at Oyster Mill Playhouse

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR is now 45 years old, making the message of Jesus through Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice older than Jesus at the time of the crucifixion. In the course of those 45 years, it's spread almost everyplace that Christianity has spread, and probably a few places that the religion itself has a rather small foothold. It's been hailed and excoriated by religious groups, some of which have found the contemporary version of the story of Jesus to be less than, well, Christian. It's also been updated variously, perhaps most successfully in the recent Australian version that places Jesus and the apostles in something akin to the Occupy movement and makes use of social media and projections of tweets and Facebook messages from "the twelve".

At Oyster Mill Playhouse, director Stephanie Via has done her own update of the show, with a cast with some very fine talent to carry either Webber's and Rice's, or her, message. If what you're after is a delightful performance, look no further than Miguel Gonzalez as Jesus. Oyster Mill audiences will remember him from a marvelous performance as Che in EVITA, and he's played both Jesus and Judas in prior productions of the show elsewhere. Gonzalez has a voice that demands attention, as well as extraordinary stage presence.

Sarah Pugh's Mary Magdalene is sweet, wistful, and though she seems a bit too innocent for the part, her voice is lovely. Bryden McCurdy's Judas Iscariot may bother some literalists, but from a stage perspective there's no reason a woman can't play Judas, and well - and McCurdy does. Her denunciation of Jesus as a sellout is beautifully handled.

Stephen Hensel's Pilate and Mike Stubbs' Herod are both also nice work, and Herod's humor is first-rate. There are many ways to stage "Herod's Song" (aka "Try It and See"), but Stubbs' presentation of hot dog rolls and spring water bottles to test Jesus, along with needing them for a quick snack, is a piece of eal levity in Stubbs' hands. Bridget Still's Simon Zealotes has some real lungs when the moment calls for it.

If only the updating were as successful as the cast - it's not that it might not be made to work, but that it doesn't work fully here. The setting is a college campus, with the theme of bullying - Jesus is the leader of an anti-bullying/no-H8 ("hate") group on the campus. The Roman guard and priesthood are a campus fraternity house and some college administration. The first of the serious issues is, why is Jesus the campus leader enough of a danger to die, rather than simply to be expelled from campus? One can see why, in the midst of international and corporate-owned politics, a charismatic Occupy leader might be viewed as a clear and present danger. A college club leader? Not so much. The second major one was Jesus' crucifixion in a Che Guevara T-shirt. Jesus was a revolutionary, as was Guevara, but for someone considered a world figure of peace to be identified with a far lesser guerilla who clearly brought not peace but machine guns in Latin America - especially when he's being presented as a campus anti-bullying crusader - is far off base. Even Latin American revolutionary theology doesn't enshrine Che with Jesus.

Another rather baffling issue is the clouding of the JCS message with the "No H8" message that has grown up to be attached with celebrity support for same-sex marriage, especially when the Temple scene, to which Jesus objects ( a la throwing money lenders out of the Temple) could be read to have a faint lesbian tinge to it on the Roman side as staged here. While college campus bullying, anti-gay activity that's led to suicide, and fraternity hazings leading to deaths have been in the public eye for the past few years, and while addressing these is critical, the message, especially the gay rights issue, is a bit touchy, and definitely distracting, to add in to the message of change brought in through Jesus. That's especially so if your faith tradition doesn't see Jesus as supporting same-sex marriage.

As to that latter, while there's historic debate as to the shape of the Cross, and it really doesn't matter that much, Jesus here is essentially crucified on a fence made of garden trellis. That's at least partly due to set construction, as a a campus peace garden stands in for the garden of Gethsemane, and design constraints required this. It's director Via's thought, however, that Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence at his death, and that the fence evokes Shepard. While a more liberal school of Christianity may be comfortable conflating Shepard's death with this, more conservative audience members may be discomfited by it. It's not always good theatre to muddy the waters of an show with mixed messages, or with messages that may be this divisive to an audience. It's certainly complicating the themes.

This is not to say that Via is at all off-base. It's a noble effort, and it's hard to realize any updated show perfectly let alone at all successfully. It's that some of these issues might have been avoided if thought out for a longer period than a community theatre usually has to bring off what may be fine ideas. In fact, she deserves great credit for taking this kind of effort in a community theatre setting, and for being willing to take on issues in this way. Her directing of the cast certainly produced some good pacing and overall nice movement of the show. While this may not be the rousing success of her EVITA, it shows her willingness to take on some hard directing tasks and to tackle touchy themes. Directors need this willingness to examine ideas and to take risks, especially at the community theatre level. Kudos to Via for doing it. One hopes to see her take on more of this sort of risk.

At Oyster Mill through March 15. Call 717-737-6768 or visit www.oystermill.com for tickets and information.

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