hey, hope this isn't too random, but can you recommend any goos JCS productions to watch? i've only seen the 1973 movie and the Arena Tour one. i want to make it a tradition to watch a different production every year :D
Hmm, well, when it comes to watching it needs to exist on video, which is the main obstacle! My second favorite professional production I’ve seen was put on in Iceland a few years ago but you can’t actually access that anywhere. One of my favorite soundtracks is the 1996 London one with Steve Balsamo, but I don’t think video exists of that either.
The 2000 movie is not my favorite but is still worth a watch, I think; many of its staging choices influenced some of my favorite bits of staging in the school production that inspired my love of the show, and while I feel like everyone in it overacts by at least 150% (Pilate by at least 500%), when I rewatched it last year I think I remember liking the way it handled Jesus’s arc overall. This one really leans into the interpretation where Judas just wasn’t in control of his actions at all; God makes him betray him and he’s helpless to resist. Then it goes on to do the Judas coming out of Hell to taunt Jesus interpretation of Superstar, which is puzzling, until it goes on to imply that he’s not in control of that either, and basically that being forced to take part in tormenting Jesus is part of Judas’s torture in Hell, for the crime of being a helpless puppet in God’s plan? God’s just straight-up an absolute cruel bastard? Like, man, I prefer the interpretation where Judas is acting on genuine concerns that are tearing him apart and where Superstar is good-natured, but this one is amazingly ballsy in a super dark and twisted way and I can respect that.
...Oh, and be warned that the staging of “The Temple” in the 2000 film is intensely uncomfortable and involves the whole thing being Muslim-coded (???) and one of the extras being a stereotypical Arab caressing a missile (??????). I do not know what possessed them to do this but it’s pretty yikes.
Many people really hated the 2018 live production with John Legend, but I didn’t! The high notes aren’t really my top priority in evaluating JCS production, and while I don’t remember every thought I had I had overall reasonably positive feelings about it particularly in the second half. That’s another helpfully professionally filmed one, so if you can find that (I had real trouble finding a way to watch it that wasn’t region-locked) it’s a solid option in my opinion.
I watched this Austrian production in full today (it’s in English, just with Austrian actors and some German text), which I’d watched clips of before. While the video quality there isn’t amazing, and I have some complaints (in particular Gethsemane is underwhelming), it’s very solid overall and has a somewhat more classic, 1973-movie-like timeless JCS feel than something like the hyper-modernized 2012 Arena Tour. Drew Sarich’s emphases are sometimes a bit funky to me but I like him both as Judas (here) and as Jesus (there are a couple of videos on YouTube but not of the full production where he was Jesus; the soundtrack is there, though).
As I’ve gone into before I do not recommend the much-hyped Swedish production that can be found on YouTube; Judas is good in it but otherwise I think they were clearly more concerned with making it gay than with trying to understand what the show is actually about (and it makes some Choices that feel uncomfortably antisemitic). You can check it out for kicks if you want, it’s conveniently available and professionally filmed, but it’s not good, in my opinion.
I’ve seen in my recommendations that a bunch of other full productions seem to be available on YouTube, and if I had infinite time I would be watching all of them to pick out which ones are any good, but alas. If anyone else has got specific recommendations, by all means tip me off!
