By Jonathan Jones
We’ve been down this road before: amazingly talented actors and musicians in a poor, unfortunate show (Urban Cowboy, A Tale of Two Cities among others). Not only is the show unfortunate (early Stephen Schwartz may have a handful of memorable numbers, but overall, dreck), but this production embraces a level of unfortunate-ness that soured my evening from the moment the cast took the stage.
The central conceit of the misguided revival is to add as many anachronisms as possible to make the show seem fresh and topical—and more (horror of all horrors), to appeal to a younger audience. The problem is that good musical theatre is timeless—that’s what makes it good (Gypsy, Follies, Hairspray, etc). Godspell, as an adaptation of the Bible should easily lend itself to a timeless quality, but like the animated Shrek films and KathyGriffin’s comedy shows which have heavily influenced this production, the work here will not age well. Kathy circumvents this by constantly recreating her bits—and maybe that is the plan for this production as well—forever in state of re-writes to keep the jokes and allusions fresh and topical—but the problem (should they not) that I suspect this work will share with the Shrek films is that after a few months, the jokes refer to events and people that are better left forgotten. You might imagine that this is what happens when a well-meaning high school theatre director adds some new ‘hip’ jokes to an older musical to keep it fresh for the kids—but this is Broadway and someone should knock-knock-knock on the stage door of the Circle in the Square and remind them of this fact.
Aren’t we done with the Black Judas bit? Me thinks it’s just a bit overdone at this point (Black man betrays Jew, news at eleven). Further, as the production team have gone out of their way to have a diverse cast (oh yes, one or two of every color), they quickly forget how unfortunately condescending it is to have the blond haired, blue eyed Ken-doll-Jesus leading the heathen infidels….
Production problems aside, Telly Leung is a star. If I were writing for Broadway (you never know), I would write him a show. Pluck him from the ensemble and put him center stage! His charisma is infectious and his voice will blow you away (his opening to act II makes the ticket worthwhile).
A wise man once said that if reviewers just tear down shows, all they’re gonna get is Andrew Lloyd Webber. Little did he know the real horror that could be upon us: not just the onslaught of movie transfers, but bad-movie-inspired-revivals. I’m all for a new approach to old material, but this was not the best incarnation.
Godspell is playing at Circle in the Square. Tickets are available at telecharge
No comments:
Post a Comment