ajhlovestheatre

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR 

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber 

Lyrics by Tim Rice

directed by Paul Hart

Watermill Theatre, Bagnor near Newbury – until 21 September 2025

running time: 2 hours including interval 

https://www.watermill.org.uk/events/superstar

There are multiple ways of doing Jesus Christ Superstar. The controversial Broadway original (which Andrew Lloyd Webber famously derided as “such a freak show”) was an extravagant nightmare with an aesthetic inspired by insects, the 1973 Norman Jewison movie was a hippie trip, Sheader’s thrilling Regents Park version was like an outdoor music festival, a Kenwright tour reduced it to a gold-covered pantomime, European auteur Ivo van Hove envisioned it as something stark, disturbing and cultish. This Watermill production for actor-musicians sets it in a semi-dilapidated church inhabited by grungy, guyliner-ed hipsters, and invests it with a brooding sincerity.

Just like Evita, which is once again the talk of the West End thanks to Jamie Lloyd’s stunning Palladium revisal, Jesus Christ Superstar began life as a concept album. Watching Paul Hart’s intelligent but still viscerally exciting new version of the older show, first staged in 1971, it’s apparent that this rock opera, while not as musically sophisticated as its precocious younger sister, is more coherent as a piece of drama. There is a natural flow to the storytelling that not even a brief, not entirely necessary, sojourn outside which sees the Watermill’s picturesque Berkshire gardens on the banks of the Lambourn substituting for the garden of Gethsemane, can dispel.

Hart and his designer David Woodhead have turned the wood and stone watermill itself into a gloomy church, with graffitied walls, multiple candles illuminating the shadows, pew benches being rearranged to create locations and light streaming down through an ornate window. It’s an environment at once atmospheric and sombre yet loaded with theatrical possibilities. What follows is a swift, almost breathless, retelling of the last days of Jesus that has a touching, tender humanity alongside the rock’n’roll raucousness.

Jesus, Judas and Mary come across as real, fallible human beings here, not the impersonal archetypes they are sometimes represented as in larger scale iterations. The tormented Judas, torn between love for Jesus and the creeping dread that all of this God stuff could have dangerous repercussions, has always been a more interesting role than the title one, and so it proves again here. Max Alexander-Taylor is haunting and unsettling, presenting him as a volatile outsider with a desperately vulnerable streak. Switching seamlessly between the electric guitar, flown in from above like a symbol of divine retribution, and keyboards, he sings the role with a ringing rock tenor that sounds like it’s being ripped out of his soul. His final demise is horrible to watch yet totally compelling. It’s a stunning performance.

More lowkey but equally fine is Parisa Shahmir’s watchful, folk-inflected Mary, accompanying herself on the acoustic guitar in a gorgeous, deeply affecting version of the ballad ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’. As Jesus, looking like a boyband heartthrob, Michael Kholwadia navigates the stratospheric, intense vocal demands of the role with astonishing confidence and ease, but is an oddly blank stage presence. After his capture, torture and interrogation at the hands of Pilate (a brilliantly nervy, neurotic Christian Edwards), this Jesus seems more bored than broken, which deprives the latter parts of the show of some of its emotional impact. Vocally though, he’s one of the most secure and impressive interpreters of the role that I’ve ever heard.

The ensemble cast is loaded with charisma and sheer raw talent, whether coming together as a stomping, swaying folk-rock band, singing like angels or executing Anjali Mehra’s angular, galvanising choreography with real plomb. Michali Dantes is a cracking, dangerous Simon Zealotes and Seb Harwood makes something memorable and tragic out of Peter’s denial of Christ. Samuel Morgan-Grahame’s vicious leather queen Herod is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, and comes close to stopping the show.

The church setting lends the show a sense of gravitas and mystery that is sublimely effective, augmented by outstanding work from lighting designer Rory Beaton whose contributions range from bathing the company in a comforting golden glow, to a blinding battery of rock stadium illumination for the title number, with much in between. He paints with walls of light, allowing characters and scenes to magically appear and disappear apparently out of nowhere….it’s fun but also vaguely sinister, as are Daniel Denton’s murky, striking video designs.

Stuart Morley’s adaptation of Lloyd Webber’s original musical arrangements is smart and satisfying, only very occasionally do you miss the full orchestral swell or the face-melting intensity of true hard rock. Tom Marshall’s sound design is admirably clear, so that Tim Rice’s lyrics, some of which now register as endearingly quaint but are still overall witty and pithy, are fully heard.

The idea of playing the opening of act two, so the Last Supper followed by Jesus’s vocal chord shredding solo ‘Gethsemane’ and subsequent arrest (but not for bad singing), outside with the audience in a circular wooden mini-amphitheatre, is a mixed blessing. While it’s a thrill to have somebody on the cello or guitar literally centimetres from you, the dramatic and aural intensity outdoors is drastically compromised, so, for all the efforts of this splendid cast, it feels a bit karaoke, albeit with amazing voices. The bucolic splendour of the Berkshire countryside also seems a little at odds with the atmosphere of shuddering dread and explosive confrontation that the Rice-ALW score is going for at this point. Still, using the full height of the Watermill’s structure, with Olugbenga Adelekan and Alexander Zane’s impeccably nasty authority figures staring down at all of us plebs, is undeniably impressive, and the transition back indoors for the trial and subsequent crucifixion is smoothly handled. I’m just not sure it was ultimately worth the effort.

There is a lot here to love though. An original, frequently rousing, take on a beloved score that for the most part feels timeless, with an intriguing shabby-chic visual aesthetic which throws up several breathtaking moments. Plus a jawdroppingly talented cast. Other Watermill productions (Amelie, Mack and Mabel, Lord of the Rings….last year’s Barnum about to tour) have gone on to have further lives elsewhere, and this Superstar thoroughly deserves a similar fate. Well worth a trip into the Home Counties.