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Jesus Christ Superstar: All of My Thoughts

This will be me watching my way through the Jesus Christ Superstar 2012 arena tour with Tim Minchin/Ben Forster and rambling about absolutely everything as I go, prompted by me having a lot of thoughts approximately every two minutes while watching it on YouTube/rewatching it/listening to multiple other JCS productions in between. Unusually for me, there will be very little complaining. This production is not perfect, but that’s not really what I’m here to talk about right now, shush, let me just go on about why I love this musical, at incredible length.

(I will be talking both about particulars in this production and about JCS in general as a narrative, without explicitly distinguishing the two, but please rest assured I do know which is which. I am pretty hardcore, I have seen five different productions live (including the 2013 leg of the arena tour) as well as the movies, listened to a lot of different Gethsemanes, I know this show.)

(this will also jump wildly between deep intellectual analysis and just me shamelessly appreciating the whump content, please bear with me)

• can I start off by saying I really love the band and instrumentation and arrangements in 2012
• The JCS overture is really long but I love it and it’s always fun to see exactly what they do with it when it’s staged. This production goes with showing Jesus’s followers as protesters clashing with police, following news headlines, and then, during the calm choral “betrayal leitmotif”, they’re all gathered around Jesus staring at him in the most ominous way - then, as the first notes of “Heaven On Their Minds” play, Jesus closes his eyes and shakes his head a little, as if snapping out of a thought - as if he just felt the coming of betrayal. Neat.
• Anyway, “Heaven On Their Minds”! This is such a good song. When I first saw JCS, as my school’s production in 2005, and it opened not with Jesus but with Judas, presenting these totally reasonable concerns that he has about Jesus, I was already so intrigued by where this was going. Judas is the actual protagonist of JCS; one of the main narrative things it’s doing is telling these events largely from his point of view, imagining how what he did might be interpreted to be sympathetic and understandable. This is why he gets the opening number and the final proper song with the show’s closing musings. If you put on JCS and treat it like it’s a story about Jesus with Judas as a side character, you’re doing it wrong.
• The iconic opening riff of “Heaven On Their Minds” is what I’m calling the “Agony” motif in my musical motif chart, because the places it recurs are the moment Judas resolves to hang himself in “Judas’s Death” and… “The 39 Lashes”. Originally I connected it to Judas, but “The 39 Lashes” has nothing at all to do with Judas; instead, the one thing that connects these three occurrences of the motif is pain - which really rather underlines how painful it is when Judas’s mind clears and he sees what lies ahead.
• So, Judas: he was one of Jesus’s closest friends, and a real, true believer in what this movement was originally about: charity, compassion, noble ideals. But lately, he’s seen it turn into more of a cult of personality around Jesus himself - you’ve begun to matter more than the things you say. Now they’re all thinking Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God - and worse, it’s like Jesus is starting to believe it himself.
• (Tim Minchin does this little frustrated eyeroll on you really do believe this talk of God is true, and I love it. I know his vocal performance is not to everyone’s taste, and I get why especially with the unwarranted autotuning on the official recording, but I just love his actual acting here, his expressions and body language, so much. I was watching him for most of the show when I saw this live, because I usually spend most of JCS looking for whether Judas is doing something interesting in the background, and it was choice. Unfortunately the editor for this official recording isn’t quite as interested in what Judas is doing in the background as I am, alas, and there are a lot of bits where I’d like to get a better look at him but we don’t, but there are still some very good reactions.)
• So, the reason this is bad, this whole messiah thing, is not only that calling Jesus their king might rub the authorities the wrong way, but also that now they’re all expecting Jesus to up and free them from Roman oppression. Which is just not a thing that he can do! Judas is worried if Jesus doesn’t deliver his followers will turn against him (and they’ll hurt you when they find they’re wrong). He’s worried if Jesus actually does try anything, or heaven forbid, his followers just do it on their own - Jesus’s words are already being taken out of context and twisted to justify whatever the speaker feels like - if they step so much as a toe over the line, that’ll be all the excuse the Romans need to regard the Jewish community as a whole as violent insurgents or a delusional cult and bring in the army. This movement used to be a beautiful thing, but it’s become an existential threat with the potential to get them all killed. And - when Judas tries to voice these concerns, Jesus brushes them off. He won’t listen. Things are spiraling out of control, and Jesus won’t do anything about it.
• (Note, by the way, that a big part of Judas’s worries is worries about Jesus in particular getting hurt.)
• (Judas is very focused here on the future, all these things looming on the horizon that could happen if things continue as they are - so when we transition abruptly into the upbeat “What’s the Buzz?”, where Jesus tries to get his followers to think less about the future and more about the here and now, for all that it feels like a musical and textual non-sequitur we’re actually kind of staying on theme.)
• Jesus hasn’t been doing anything about things or listening to Judas, and is very focused on the here and now, because as it happens he knows (or at least believes) that in a few days he is going to be tortured and executed, and really he doesn’t entirely know what’s going to happen after that, and this is pretty terrifying and stressful and right now he’s dealing with that by trying to not think about it.
• Why are you obsessed with fighting times and fates you can’t defy? He basically means this at this point. Why would you try to fight inevitable fates? That’s pointless; it’s not like Jesus would ever do that. You just don’t think about them. Jesus is fine. It’s fine. This is fine.
• (Mary is the one person who’s actively helping Jesus take his mind off things and stay in the moment. Emotionally he really needs to just relax and think of nothing and be told everything’s all right, and Mary’s the person who provides that. She alone has tried to give me what I need right here and now. I contend that this is the main point of Mary’s role in the first act of JCS, more than her infatuation with him.)
• Buuuut of course Judas has no idea what’s behind this. As far as he can tell Jesus is just kind of hypocritically wasting his time on hedonistic indulgence, like the whole Son of God thing’s just gone to his head, and like everything else about the situation, it’s concerning, and he tries to speak out about it, in “Strange Thing, Mystifying”…
• …which prompts Jesus to lash out. There was a sort of frustration behind some of his lines in “What’s the Buzz”, but he still just seemed to be preaching a general philosophy of staying in the here and now. At Judas’s criticisms, though, he’s defensive and confrontational, exhorting him to not throw stones… and he’s not done: I’m amazed that men like you can be so shallow, thick and slow! There is not a man among you who knows or cares if I come or go!
• That’s a total strange overreaction, especially since he starts out addressing Judas but then goes on to “There is not a man among you”, when nobody else was saying anything, much less anything implying they don’t care about Jesus. So, obviously, this isn’t really about what Judas just said. What this is showing us is that Jesus has a lot of pent-up frustrations and concerns, too, and he’s in a strangely delicate mood. It’s kind of an odd sequence watching it for the first time; this lashout is weird! I thought it was weird when I first saw the show! But that’s the point. It’s here because it is weird, because Jesus is not as fine as he seems.
• (This is what almost every song with Jesus in it in Act I is about. It’s a series of incidents - many of them based on actual bits from the Bible - of Jesus lashing out unexpectedly and/or being strongly disillusioned with his followers and vaguely, bitterly alluding to his upcoming death. The weight of anticipating his own execution is taking a real psychological toll on him from the start, and this is all building towards where all those fears and doubts and worries and anger come out in “Gethsemane”. It took me the longest time to properly notice this, that Jesus isn’t just sort of being a drama queen out of nowhere here; these events are being presented like this to connect them into a cohesive speculative narrative that this was all just manifestations of Jesus’s anxiety about the fact he believes he’s going to die in a few days and he’s not sure what he’s really accomplished.)
• While the apostles join together in a chorus of No, you’re wrong! You’re very wrong!, Judas silently pulls out a cigarette, because 2012 Judas smokes to calm his nerves and I love it. The nerves don’t stop him rolling his eyes again in the background at Jesus’s Not one of you!, though. (Jesus has probably been having these weird, oddly self-pitying lashouts for a little while now - it feels like a “this again” sort of eye-roll.)
• Judas tries again to confront Jesus during “Everything’s Alright”, even more emphatic, but in a more sincere and genuine way - he really wants to get through to him. No, seriously, Jesus, why are you wasting expensive ointment on your feet and hair when the poor are starving - you know, the thing this movement was supposed to be about. Mary, probably a bit higher in emotional intelligence than Judas, can obviously tell that Jesus is just pretty stressed out right now and really needs some rest, and basically just tries to get Jesus to ignore him until he goes away - but Jesus responds to him anyway. Starts calm, but there’s an oddly defeatist quality to what he’s saying - there’ll always be poor people, we can’t save them, look at the good things you’ve got… and then he launches into another bitter lashout: Think while you still have me, move while you still see me - you’ll be lost, you’ll be so, so sorry, when I’m gone. Strike two on Jesus-is-not-as-fine-as-he-seems.
• (Seriously, though, at this point it’d be reasonable to be pretty alarmed; from an outside perspective, these lines sound kind of suicidal. Perhaps that’s why Mary immediately steps in again to try to calm him down.)
• Meanwhile, Judas silently backs off. What he takes away from these two confrontations is that Jesus isn’t really happy either. He’s not actually thrilled with his followers or what’s going on; he just seems to feel helpless and unable to change anything at all, and has apparently just resigned himself to it, instead of even trying to fix it.
• I love how gloriously ominous the “Hosanna Superstar” bit of “This Jesus Must Die” is. It really makes this upcoming cheerful song sound like an omen of doom and horror, the way it feels to the Pharisees. It’s the same melody as “We need him crucified” in “Trial Before Pilate” - apt, since the crowd’s devotion to Jesus is the real problem that causes the Pharisees to believe they need to get him killed.
• Thus, the Pharisees have basically the same concerns Judas does - Jesus’s mass of fans is growing out of control, they’re blasphemously insisting he’s their king, and it’s only a matter of time before this brings the wrath of the Romans down upon the entire Jewish nation. They only go a bit further by believing the only way to properly quash this movement is to put Jesus to death. (Which is kind of dubious - surely there’s a danger that martyring him will just make people more devoted - but I appreciate that they, too, get basically sympathetic motivations. It’s the oppression of the Romans that’s the real enemy here; they only see Jesus as a real problem because of how the Romans might react.)
• By “Hosanna”, Jesus has recovered his usual composure and passion. This is the one Jesus song where he does genuinely seem to be doing all right, and in that way it serves as a good contrast to literally everything else in this musical. In it we see a glimpse of the preacher and activist that he’s been for these three years, almost bursting with glee as he tells the Pharisees they’re not going to be quiet at all thank you very much. He preaches his message to the crowd: There is not one of you who cannot win the Kingdom - a kind, positive echo of yesterday’s angry lashout. He loves this, and he still loves this movement. This is what it’s all supposed to be about.
• …only, of course, for some people to yell “Hey, J.C., J.C., won’t you die for me!”, and he turns his head, his smile fading just a little (I wish the camera stayed on him a little while longer here). But he recovers and carries on. Ha ha, yeah, he’d die for you.
• Jesus’s own rally leads directly into Simon’s rave, full of adoring fans begging Jesus to touch and kiss them. Same enthusiasm, but more obviously a product of that cult of personality that Judas was worried about. And there in the middle of it is Simon, so bright-eyed and enthusiastic about the whole thing, telling him about how with his probably over 50,000 followers, he should add just a smidge of hatred towards the Romans, and you will rise to a greater power, we will win ourselves a home! He’s one of those who want Jesus to be leading a violent revolution to free them.
• I like how the first portion of “Poor Jerusalem” echoes a slow, somber version of the same melody as “Simon Zealotes” as Jesus laments, almost to himself, that none of them, nobody at all, understands power, or glory, or anything. This time Jesus isn’t really angry, just kind of exhausted and contemplative. Nobody really seems to get his message; these poor misguided people won’t get the revolution they’re hoping for; Jerusalem itself is doomed. The city wouldn’t be willing to do what’s needed even if they knew.
• To conquer death, you only have to die is one of my favorite lines. I’m an atheist, but as a kid I remember being taught at the Christian summer camp I went to that by dying himself, Jesus conquered death. That idea is twisted and presented the other way around here: to conquer death, you only have to die. Only. An darkly ironic presentation of it as if it were easy. It’s not as easy as Jesus would like it to be - but he truly believes that it’s what he must do.
• “Pilate’s Dream” has the same melody as the second half of “Poor Jerusalem” - because both Jesus and Pilate are contemplating an unsettling future that they have seen.
• I do think it’s a little wrong that 2012 Pilate chuckles at the end of “Pilate’s Dream”, though. The whole point of this song, as far as I can tell, is that he’s unsettled by this dream, and it’s probably part of why he’s so reluctant to sentence Jesus to death later, so I think it’s an incongruous choice to make it seem like he just sort of brushed it off as nonsense.
• As I have talked about, the arena tour staging includes Simon buying a gun during "The Temple”, a really chilling detail that I liked a lot and that is in no way discernible in the official recording. Maybe the editor didn’t notice, maybe it just wasn’t very clear in the footage they got anyway, maybe it’s some sort of ratings issue where showing a gun for a few seconds would just be too much (while the lengthy, brutal torture and execution scenes coming up are totally fine). Obviously it doesn’t mean anything for the later narrative or anything (especially since the actual narrative is taking place in 33 AD and guns don’t actually exist, regardless of the staging choices of any particular production), but it’s a nice way of using staging to lend further support to the overall point of how Jesus’s followers variously fail to understand his teachings - it strengthens both Jesus’s and Judas’s concerns.
• When Jesus and Judas arrive at the temple, they’re arguing once again, though we don’t know what about. Given the way Jesus is striding towards the doors and Judas is trying to hold him back, I imagine Judas is worried that doing something like running into the temple and breaking tables and screaming is the sort of attention-grabbing, polarizing stunt that’d be a really bad idea, and Jesus is upset and doesn’t care.
• (The bouncer doesn’t let Judas in. I’m guessing Jesus tells him Judas is harassing him or something, within the staging-narrative where the temple is a nightclub that has a bouncer.)
• So Jesus goes and smashes a table and yells at everyone to get out. This is probably where Jesus begins to alienate a lot of people, who were having a great time at the temple only for him to come in and have a breakdown at them.
• (He’s so angry, breathing hard, fists clenched after everyone’s left. This isn’t really about the temple either. He’s really begun to realize how many of his followers don’t get it at all, and he doesn’t have time to fix that. He’s been trying for so long and he’s so tired.)
• The leper bit makes a pretty similar point. Jesus wants to help all these people, and tries - but there are too many, and they’re crowding him, and he’s not going to be around to help them for much longer - so he desperately tells them to heal themselves, and they leave, probably thinking wow Jesus is kind of a jerk.
• I’m sorry, I don’t have anything to say about “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”, love ballads are pretty consistently my least favorite song in every musical, I like and appreciate Mary but my investment in this song pretty much begins and ends with its role in setting up the twisted reprise in “Judas’s Death”
• I enjoy the fourth-wall-leaning audacity of having the guitarist spotlighted on stage playing the solo before “Damned For All Time”, and Judas is looking at him like “who are you, go away”, and keeps looking evasively back at him while he’s slowly getting the Pharisees’ number out of his wallet and calling it. (It also helps show Judas feels pretty guilty and shameful about doing this, and works better for that than having extras on stage - if it were extras, we might expect that them witnessing this could actually mean something later, but when it’s the guitarist, it’s obvious he’s just serving as an anonymous stand-in for a hypothetical random stranger who isn’t literally part of the story.)
• I like the shot of Judas looking into the security camera outside the Pharisees’ building. (That’s decidedly not the same hairdo Tim Minchin has on stage, though.)
• Judas opens his talk with the Pharisees, without even greeting them first, by frantically justifying himself, talking about how this is weird and hard for him but there was just nothing else he could do, he’s not hoping for a reward or anything, he’s been forced to do this, he’s not a dirty traitor, please don’t think that. He really doesn’t want to be here. But here he is anyway, because Jesus can’t control it like he did before - and furthermore I know that Jesus thinks so too, Jesus wouldn’t mind that I’m here with you. He’s seen Jesus over the past few days and he’s pretty sure he has this figured out. Jesus can see just as well as he does where things are headed - it’s just he’s helpless to control it and doesn’t know what to do about it. So this has to be done. He’d probably want Judas to bail him out of this, just get him arrested and the movement shut down, for everyone’s sake. (Jesus is so self-sacrificing, after all.) Right? He’d be fine with this. Right? (Judas is fine.)
• (“Damned For All Time” is just Judas wildly word-vomiting trying to placate his own guilt and I love it. He’s legitimately afraid of where things are headed if he doesn’t do this, and thinks it has to ultimately be the right thing, but that doesn’t make him feel any better about it.)
• (I like how Caiaphas just sort of coolly listens to him ramble his head off like this while he sips his drink.)
• Judas goes for a cigarette again (calming those nerves), and Annas helpfully lights it for him - prompting Judas’s next ramble. Annas, you’re a friend, a worldly man and wise - Caiaphas, my friend, I know you sympathize. It’s not like he’s selling Jesus out to anyone unreasonable. Annas is nice! We three, we get it, right? You get it. We’re the people who can see when a difficult thing just has to be done, did I mention I HAVE to do this and this is not about money - only for Annas to tell him to cut it out with this blather and excuses and just give them the information they want. And also, they’ll pay him handsomely!
• I don’t need your blood money! Judas says, then I don’t want your blood money! Sometimes these lines are reversed, which sounds better - there’s something more satisfying about the vowel in need than in want - but I think textually this original order is important. First he’s sort of polite-ish-ly declining, saying no, he doesn’t need any money, but then when they insist, he declines more firmly, that he doesn’t want it either. (I love the way he shoves Annas’s hand away.) It’s so important to Judas’s own principles that he came here because he thinks it’s right, not because he wants payment; the idea of being paid makes it way worse.
• …But then Caiaphas grabs the cigarette out of his mouth (leaving him a bit shaken with nothing to hold onto anymore) and goes well, you can give it to charity, or to the poor; they understand that’s not why he’s doing this, but they’d still like to pay him a fee. And that’s the reason he ultimately does take the money: because just a few days earlier he was telling Jesus off for letting money be wasted when it could have gone to the poor. How could he do the same?
• (Judas is not doing this for the money in this show. He is not being tempted by the money. He was not going to take the money until he was told he could give it to charity. One of the professional live productions I saw just did not understand this at all, and no. Judas is the protagonist! He is not here for the money! It’s done right here, with the Pharisees just throwing the money at him after he names Gethsemane, and him not even reacting, just slowly picking it up afterwards. Tim Minchin gets Judas.)
• I like to think the Well done, Judas / Good old Judas chorus is sort of the voice of the Divine Plan, such as it is, which he’s now done his first part in.
• “The Last Supper” has slowly become one of my favorite parts of the entire show, and I particularly enjoy it in this particular production.
• Judas walks in and doesn’t look at Jesus at all - can’t quite bear to, at the moment. Jesus looks after him, knowing exactly what’s going on… and that’s when he starts in on The end is just a little harder when brought about by friends.
• Jesus has a drink of the wine, which I like a lot. This definitely is a drinking sort of moment. I like the idea of him being a little inebriated in this scene.
• For all you care, this wine could be my blood. For all you care, this bread could be my body. The end… This is my blood you drink, this is my body you eat. Judas reflexively rolls his eyes again - Jesus off on one of these weird sorts of rants yet again. (As with so much, I love that Jesus Christ Superstar takes this bit of the Bible and lets it just be a weird thing to say, recontextualizes it as an empty, halfhearted statement that he doesn’t feel like his followers even care hours before his impending arrest, instead of treating it as something profound and meaningful. Again and again, Jesus is portrayed less as a noble profound religious figure and more as just a person haunted by mounting dread and anxiety, and I love it so much.)
• Jesus sort of tries to make this into a nice, comforting thing, to ask them to remember him when they eat and drink - but it doesn’t work. It’s happening tonight, and here they all are, these people, his supposed followers, who don’t understand a thing he’s said, ever, and Jesus just breaks. I must be mad, thinking I’ll be remembered! Yes, I must be out of my head! Look at your blank faces! My name will mean nothing ten minutes after I’m dead! (Judas looks up vaguely, kind of concerned - Jesus, this is further than he usually goes.) One of you denies me, one of you betrays me! And that’s when Judas really looks up. Jesus knows.
• There’s a pause, a commotion, and Jesus is going to just retreat and leave it at that - but no, then he keeps going. He calls out Peter specifically for being about to deny him three times, shoving him, and then yells about how one of my twelve chosen will leave to betray me! At which Judas finally stands up. Cut out the dramatics! You know very well who! It’s obvious that somehow Jesus found out. (Maybe Judas thinks the guitarist might have told on him.)
• Judas’s surprised You want me to do it? when Jesus tells him to go do it delights me. Judas, I thought you knew that Jesus totally wanted you to do this. It’s almost like you didn’t really know that at all and just convinced yourself of that to feel better about it. (Obviously, though, Jesus clearly doesn’t actually want it so much, does he, the way he’s shouting.)
• Judas tries to explain himself but Jesus doesn’t care - he doesn’t want to hear about why one of his most trusted friends wants to betray him to the authorities, not when this has to happen and he can’t prevent it. Judas is really nervous and defensive and hurt by his hostility, declares he hates Jesus now. (You liar, you Judas! Jesus says, which is kind of hilarious and also - yeah, he’s a liar, he doesn’t hate Jesus at all.) You wanted me to do it? What if I just stayed here and ruined your ambition? Christ, you deserve it! Judas still kind of wants to just stay and cancel the whole thing, even if it’s simply justified as petulant spite. But Jesus tells him to just go already; he just wants to get this over with, as quickly as possible, because it hurts.
• Judas is near tears as he turns away to get his things. The apostles have no idea what’s going on, singing, some of them trying to see if Judas is okay, which suggests they have no idea what they were even talking about - whatever this ‘betrayal’ is supposed to be, it doesn’t cross their minds that Judas is about to get Jesus arrested.
• Judas trudges up the steps, batting them away, still on the verge of tears - only then he stops, his face changing. And he throws down his backpack and turns for one final confrontation with Jesus. You sad, pathetic man! Look what you’ve brought us to! Our ideals die around us, and all because of you! This is still about their ideals for him, after all. And yet, saddest of all, someone had to turn Jesus in - like a common criminal, he first says, but then, like a wounded animal, someone helpless to help themselves, who needs to be pitied and put out of their misery. Jesus could have done something. Jesus could have put a stop to this. Why does he have to do it? (Why does he have to do it?)
• Every time I look at you, I don’t understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand. You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned. Why? Jesus does have a plan, of sorts, of course - it’s just that this is all part of it. Judas doesn’t believe Jesus is actually the Son of God, or that he could possibly have a “plan” that involves dying for some grand cosmic cause. As far as he can tell Jesus’s actions are just bizarre and pathetic and self-defeating, and he’s been saddled with the unfortunate, dirty job of saving Jesus from himself.
• (Judas presumably still doesn’t realize that the Pharisees plan to literally have him killed. I doubt he’d be doing this, or at least not in this way, if he knew.)
• In the wake of this final confrontation, Mary hugs Peter, who Jesus just shoved and accused of denying him. She considers going to Jesus too, but Peter convinces her they’d probably best leave it alone. Peter himself seems to be considering going to Jesus, but then doesn’t. Everyone dejectedly goes to sleep. Jesus is alone for tonight, his apostles alienated, his right-hand man gone as Jesus must wait for him to return with soldiers and set the dreaded end in motion. This must be the loneliest, most awful night of his life.
• Jesus rubs his hand hard against a stair as the apostles are finishing their song - an agitated fidget that I am far more fond of than I should be. As he realizes they’ve all gone to sleep, he grips it instead, something to hold on to. Will no one stay awake with me? Peter, John, James? He just sounds broken and like he’s about to cry. Which is good. He sings all of Gethsemane sounding like he’s on the verge of tears and that’s exactly how it should sound, do not at me.
• (Please bear with me as I go on about this Gethsemane because it’s my favorite one ever at this point, haters to the left)
• See, when I first saw this production (I saw the official recording once before I realized it was still on and I could see it live), I didn’t really like Ben Forster’s Jesus for the first half! He seemed sort of over-the-top and I wasn’t the biggest fan of his voice and all in all I was ehhh on him. But then he did “Gethsemane” and I just felt it to my core in a way I’d never felt it before, and it floored me. I’ve watched and listened to a lot of versions of this song. There are better singers who make it more pleasant to listen to - but they tend to be very dignified and Jesus-y about it, like this poised religious figure just having a brief moment of vulnerability and emotionality. Even the performances specifically praised for being emotional tend to be the ones that just make it really angry. And I’ve seen a lot of great ones of both varieties! But Ben Forster just makes it so raw and human. Like this terrified, exhausted, desperate human being who’s spent the entire preceding hour of this play dreading this thing that’s coming, his resolve finally faltering in this moment of agonizing solitude as his doubts and fears and frustrations finally come pouring out, how much he wants to call the whole thing off, begging to either not have to do this or at least be properly convinced why he should. It’s what made me properly start to look at Jesus’s character progression during this story in the first place and notice all the buildup about his fragile mental state that’s always been there in the lyrics. This is the “Gethsemane” that made me really, truly care about Jesus.
• he’s rubbing the stair again at the beginning of the song, I’m sorry I love fidgets and nervous gestures you guys
• I’ve never heard anyone emphasize three years the way Ben Forster does, and the desperation of it hits me in the heart. Weren’t these three years enough?
• Let’s talk about You’re far too keen on where and how, and not so hot on why, which is pretty key to this show’s interpretation of Jesus. He and the Almighty are definitively not the same entity here; Jesus knows or believes he knows a lot of things about how this is all going to play out, and even some of the future beyond that (in “Poor Jerusalem”), but he doesn’t actually understand what his death is supposed to accomplish. He knows that he’s going to be crucified and it’s going to happen because Judas betrays him and so on and so on, and that this is all supposedly very important, and Jesus has been willing to accept that without question, but really he doesn’t know the whys here and never has, and as much as he’s just never questioned it anyway because of his absolute conviction that this is God’s plan, he can’t not do so now, when he’s going to have to suffer an agonizing death in the service of these inscrutable goals, not sometime in the vague far future but soon.
• (Technically, for all we know, Jesus isn’t the Son of God. God doesn’t answer him; the song is a monologue. Jesus has suspiciously specific knowledge of the future but that’s about it as far as actual concrete evidence of his divinity goes in this show. But what matters is that he believes this is what God wills.)
• His initial All right. I’ll die. Just watch me die! is so spiteful, only for the following lines to just turn into this anguished scream, and it kills me
• I love the way he collapses on the stairs, and just finally breaks down and starts crying, and there’s that agitated rubbing of the stair again
• The second three years is just exhausted and my heart still breaks for it. These have been a hard three years. Seems like ninety.
• Why then am I scared to finish is probably my favorite line in this. He just sounds so broken and desperate and actually scared, and his body language is so tense and agitated and desperate; he’s so angry at himself for being scared when this has been the plan all along and for some reason now he just can’t seem to go through with it.
• And then he has that realization. What I started? …What you started. I didn’t start it! This isn’t his plan. He’s just a cog in God’s machinery. It’s a fixed, unavoidable fate, isn’t it? And he finds a kind of desperate acceptance in just thinking of it that way - at least for a moment (before I change my mind!). But it’s a spiteful acceptance. He’s addressing God now. I will drink your cup of poison, nail me to your cross and break me, bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now! Because it’s you who are doing this. It’s your cross, you who are killing me. Note the contrast to earlier: Let them hate me, hit me, hurt me, nail me to their tree. It’s not actually the people who are responsible for any of this, even if they’ll technically be the ones to do the deed; it’s God’s plan, his cross, his crucifixion.
• I love how he looks so tense standing there afterwards while the audience is applauding, because he’s not actually waiting for applause, he’s waiting for the soldiers to arrest him and set him on the path to his execution. Arms spread at first, in a come at me sort of way, but then he just clenches his fists at his sides, eyes closed, still waiting.
• There he is. They’re all asleep, the fools. Implying Judas wouldn’t have just gone to sleep, if he’d been left there. AU where Jesus has literally anyone to comfort him, instead of standing there alone desperately pleading to God to not have him killed. Hnngh.
• The kiss is just as it is in the Bible, of course. But there, it’s presented as a sort of extra nasty element of this betrayal, that he’d be betrayed with a kiss. Here, it’s more like Judas just wants to say goodbye, one last time, and does it in this kind of tender way.
• And… Jesus breaks down crying, clings to him, pulls him into a hug. Because of course he does. The reminder that Judas still cares, memories of everything they’ve been through together, and the knowledge this is probably his last chance at some kind of comforting human contact? Of course he does. He just wants to not be alone, for a few seconds, before the end.
• At first Judas just sort of lets him do it, but by the time the soldiers come along to separate them, Judas is clinging to Jesus, too. Ohh, my heart.
• The apostles wake up at the commotion and are immediately on their feet to fight off the soldiers. There is not a man among you who knows or cares if I come or go, Jesus said, a few days ago; now here they are, worrying for him, wanting to save him. But he has to stop them. He mustn’t be saved, and they’d only get themselves hurt. Put away your sword - don’t you see that it’s all over? It was nice but now it’s gone. That exhausted resignation.
• Why are you obsessed with fighting? Stick to fishing from now on. He doesn’t sound angry here - it’s just kind of a gentle rebuke. He’s touched that they tried. I like that he plays it that way; it’d be legit to make it angry, but in the context of how Jesus has spent a lot of time feeling like they don’t really care at all and in this moment it finally becomes clearer to him that they do - not to mention that this is basically his final goodbye to them - it makes sense to let it be kind of tender.
• From this point on, Jesus has to just quietly accept his fate. He’s very silent, barely says anything - because now things just have to play out how they play out, and nothing he says will change anything, nor should change anything.
• The reporters asking questions here (to the melody of “The Temple”) are one of the relatively few major anachronisms baked into the actual lyrics as opposed to any particular production. They’re not really reporters; it’s kind of a representation of some of his previous followers watching this as a kind of spectacle, expecting him to make a dramatic escape or fight back, excited by what’s happening (you’ll just DIE in the high priest’s house!), rather than sympathizing or caring. These are the people who are going to ultimately turn against him as a mob and pressure Pilate into crucifying him.
• Caiaphas asks if Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus says That’s what you say, yet another line based directly on the Bible. Growing up I always just found that kind of a silly thing for him to say - why won’t he just stick to his story instead of suddenly acting like he never said such a thing? But it makes real sense here. Again, Jesus is resigned to his fate, to passively letting this happen. He’s not going to deny it or try to get out of it, because he can’t and mustn’t. But he has no desire to speak up about how the rocks and stones will sing for him right now, or actively provoke them and give them more reasons to persecute him. He’s just going to stand here and let things happen until it’s over.
• (also, he probably doesn’t really feel so much like the Son of God right now)
• Judas, thank you for the victim! Stay a while and you’ll see him bleed! In this production, Caiaphas and Annas both say the last sentence together, but originally it’s just Annas, which has always led me to feel that where Caiaphas is pure cold pragmatism and just believes this is what needs to be done for the sake of the nation, Annas is bit of a twisted son of a bitch. He’s obviously intentionally twisting the knife here, because he thinks Judas’s conflictedness about the whole thing is a bit pathetic and hilarious and likes to see him squirm.
• (let me complain again about the editor not letting us see Judas’s reaction to this line)
• Peter’s reluctance to throw his phone on the fire is a mood
• also him threatening the homeless people with a broken bottle when they keep pressing him on whether he was with Jesus, before Mary takes it off him, is something I enjoy
• Pilate and Christ probably takes place at Pilate’s gym in this staging to show Pilate hasn’t even made time for Jesus in an official capacity - he’s just being unexpectedly brought before him in his off time, hence why he’s particularly dismissive here.
• Jesus barely looks at Pilate. Another dispassionate That’s what you say.
• How can someone in your state be so cool about his fate? An amazing thing, this silent king. Of course, Pilate doesn’t understand any more than anyone else that Jesus being crucified is the plan. Again, Jesus is just letting this play out.
• He does look up when Pilate declares he should go to Herod instead, though. It must be torture for him having this drawn out further. Poor Jesus, having to suffer through a comic relief number when he just wants to get this over with.
• Jesus does look at Herod as he’s making all these offers of letting him free if he’ll just perform a miracle. It’s got to be a tempting thought despite everything. But no, he must still sit there and let it happen.
• “These results are for entertainment purposes only and do not reflect any real votes. The outcome is predetermined by the character of King Herod who clearly is going to find Jesus guilty of being a fraud otherwise it would be a very short Act 2.” Going all the way with that fourth-wall-breaking.
• the bit where they put the hood over Jesus’s head sure hits some specific button I didn’t realize I had
• Judas there with his head buried in his hands in the background towards the end of “Could We Start Again Please” ohhhh
• I feel like the usual implication with the abrupt opening of “Judas’s Death” is that Judas has just been seeing Jesus being beaten, whereas here he’s explicitly sitting there with the apostles contemplating what he’s done and just gets up and freaks out when Caiaphas and Annas happen to walk by. I like him punching Caiaphas, but the way he just goes from zero to sixty there does feel a little weird. I don’t care, though, Judas in the background during “Could We Start Again Please” is worth it.
• For all that Judas is mortified by the way Jesus is being made an example of, he can also see the way his name will forever be associated with treachery, and none of his good intentions meant anything at all in the end. He’s wracked with guilt at what he’s done, but additionally all he can see in the future is being vilified and reviled, blamed for Jesus’s murder.
• Ugh Annas kicking Judas while he’s down he’s such a bastard
• Tim Minchin goes so all out on making “Judas’s Death” just ugly anguished screaming and crying and I am so here for it.
• Judas has never believed in the divinity of Jesus, but Jesus has some strange, intense, frightening quality that both Judas and Mary can feel, and just before his final breakdown, although Judas is telling himself that He’s a man - he’s just a man!, he seems to be starting to feel that that’s not quite true: he starts to wonder if Jesus will leave him be after his death, and then right after the “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” reprise is where his mental state takes a turn as he realizes God is behind all this, that perhaps the whole thing was planned.
• The projecting images of Jesus’ torment up onto the background screen as Judas is despairing is also very good - Jesus hasn’t even been sentenced yet but he knows where this is headed and he sure is imagining it and feeling responsible for it.
• Judas, like Jesus, concludes here that it’s God who orchestrated all this and he never got a choice. In his case, though, it’s serving as a way of running from his guilt. We got to hear all about his reasons for thinking this was the right thing to do, after all - it’s not as if he was literally controlled into anything. He didn’t realize he was dooming Jesus to a horrible death at the time, but he still did it of his own free will. And it isn’t a real comfort - all it means is that in his final anguished moments he has someone to scream his despair at. You have murdered me!
• (hang me from your tree)
• the particular scream and sob that he does as he kicks the box out from under him hits my buttons very hard hhhh
• Poor old Judas, so long, Judas, goes the Plan chorus. There’s a pretty callous quality to that, appropriately enough for a very callous Plan involving a lot of suffering.
• Please give my compliments to the sound designer who makes a point of turning on Jesus’ microphone so we can hear his strained breathing before “Trial Before Pilate” begins
• Jesus’s resolve to say nothing of substance is breaking by this point, and he actually answers Pilate’s “Where is your kingdom?” I have got no kingdom in this world, I’m through, through, through - there may be a kingdom for me somewhere, if I only knew. It’s probably pretty hard to feel like he’s headed for a triumphant resurrection right now, and the fact he’s spilling those doubts to Pilate in a moment of frustrated honesty is pretty tragic.
• (Some versions, including the 1973 movie, change this lyric to if you only knew. No! Bad! The whole point here is Jesus doubting it! If you want to change it you should not be putting on this show!)
• Then he’s a king? It’s what you say I am! I look for truth and find that I get damned! This frustration coming out here is so good.
• Pilate’s frustration is very good too - just dripping off every line. This mob of people insisting he sentence this harmless fool to death (one who reminds him uncomfortably of this dream that he had the other day), crowing about Caesar all of a sudden like they’re oh so very concerned with protecting Caesar’s authority.
• As Jesus once again refuses to talk, there’s a brief mournful instrumental interlude before Look at your Jesus Christ - this is a slowed-down version of a bit of “Prescience”, the motif from “Pilate’s Dream”. He remembers that unsettling dream, consciously or unconsciously, and feels sympathy and pity for this strange man before him. After that is when he begins to argue that Jesus hasn’t committed any crime and there’s no reason to kill him.
• can we appreciate that Webber and Rice went and made a song called “The 39 Lashes” that’s literally just Pilate counting excruciatingly to 39 while Jesus screams in pain
• can we also appreciate Jesus writhing on the floor after rolling down the stairs, Ben Forster really goes for it in acting out all this pain and torture and I love him for it
• Why do you not speak when I have your life in my hands? asks Pilate, and Jesus just about musters the energy to say, You have nothing in your hands. Any power you have comes to you from far beyond - everything is fixed and you can’t change it! He’s kind of desperate to make Pilate understand this. Pilate keeps on trying to get Jesus to say something that’ll let him release him, but that can’t happen, because this must be so. Pilate needs to just play his part and get it over with, please get it over with.
• And so, Pilate has to appease the mob and let him die, even though he doesn’t want to at all, and tries to wash his hands of it. Much like in his dream, though, he’ll in fact be remembered as the guy who sentenced Jesus to death. Clearly didn’t wash your hands well enough, Pilate
• It’s such a delightfully bold creative decision to place an upbeat number like “Superstar” right here as Jesus is about to be crucified.
• It’s fascinating to see the differences in how this song in particular is staged; it’s so abstract and disconnected that different directors really go nuts with it. Some productions, including the 2000 movie, imply Judas has come out of Hell to taunt him; the movie in particular makes a point of having Judas lazily, cruelly stand on the cross while Jesus is trying to carry it, grinning at his agony, surrounded by scantily clad demon women, though he has a moment of doubt and guilt as Jesus stares at him. (That movie generally posits Judas as not in control of his actions at all - so God is apparently basically just making him do this as part of his torture in Hell, which is delightfully twisted.) Others (including this one and the 1973 movie) have him among angels, as if he’s descended from Heaven. In the 1973 movie Carl Anderson seems largely to just be singing it to himself - it cuts to Jesus carrying the cross a few times, but Judas isn’t there.
• Here, “Superstar” feels a bit like a delirious hallucination Jesus is experiencing. Judas descends on the stage lights that are about to form the cross (what an entrance) and performs the song surrounded by angels while Jesus is being affixed to the cross; they look at each other, but Judas doesn’t really interact with him. There’s definitely no taunting; Tim Minchin plays it in a very good-natured way, not even the kind of angry questioning of Carl Anderson in the 1973 movie. Effectively, despite the hallucinatory vibes, the way it comes across to me is Judas really is actually there in spirit, from a timeless afterlife, having had an eternity to think and come to terms with and understand what Jesus was doing - and finally just asking him some questions, without judgement. Is he what they say he is? What does he think about Buddha and Mohammed? Why didn’t he choose a different time period where it would’ve been easier to spread his message? Did he know his death would inspire millions? It’s all a sort of musing, fourth-wall-leaning modern perspective, not hostile, just curious.
• Also this version just makes me happy because Judas seems happy and mentally at peace in the afterlife and who doesn’t want that
• Anyway, from that to Jesus crying on the cross. And I mean crying. Once again Ben Forster delivers the human suffering element of this story. “The Crucifixion” is a weird, weird song, chaotic and noisy and kind of offputting and tends to feel sort of inappropriate for the mood; in this production you don’t even notice because the staging is so brutal. There’s no cool symbolic dignity to this; Jesus is just crying and screaming and sobbing the whole time, yelling the disconnected final-words lines in an agonized, delirious haze. You actually believe you’re watching a man dying in agony, God damn. It hurts and I love it.
• My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? is the most gutwrenching line, of course. (And straight out of the Bible, lest we forget - I think it’s fascinating that in the likely oldest gospel of Mark as well as Matthew, this horrible, heartwrenching, human cry is all he says on the cross, while the gospels of John and Luke instead each feature their own disjoint sets of more profound-sounding sayings. It’s hard not to wonder if the other lines might be inventions by those gospels’ human authors or their sources, people who perhaps just didn’t want Jesus’s final words to be something so achingly desperate and vulnerable.) He’s done all this to carry out God’s great plan, and yet in this moment, in the middle of this nightmare of slow, unending agony, he feels certain that God has abandoned him and he’s just dying, alone, pointlessly, for nothing. Ow, my empathetic heart.
• You can hear him feeling death approaching at last and the relief he feels at that realization just before It is finished and Father, into your hands I commend my spirit
• (it’s easier to believe again when his suffering is finally, mercifully about to end)
• Ben Forster also does a very good job not visibly breathing when he’s playing a corpse. On this blog we appreciate the little things.
• I’ve always found it pretty neat and interesting that Jesus Christ Superstar does not include the resurrection or any allusion to it at all; he just dies on the cross, they mourn and carry him away, and the show ends. Again, the only thing in this show that’s at all supernatural is that Jesus seems to know the future, and even that is fairly ambiguous. It’s a story about human suffering, and it’s a hugely compelling story without him rising from the dead at the end, which’d just kind of cheapen it. You can imagine that he did, but this ending invites you to contemplate that this story is just as meaningful if he did not.
• In conclusion, Jesus Christ Superstar is one of my absolute favorite things and the 2012 arena tour is my baby
• Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Page last modified April 1 2025 at 00:33 UTC

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