The original Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Did anyone see it? How was it? It seems like everyone's memories of the piece are in the most recent revivals and the tours that accompanied them.

I've often wondered the same thing. Little seems to be said of the show before the film version. And that's especially interesting since the original Broadway production was directed by Tom O'Horgan, director the original production of HAIR.

Around the time of the 2008 revival of HAIR, there was some talk about O'Horgan, the little mention he's given for HAIR nowadays, and also his work on JC SUPESTAR. His production was said to be even more psychedelic and adventurous than HAIR was, including the use of festival-style puppetry and wild eye-grabbing visuals.

Somehow, I finally stumbled upon this clip from the 1972 Tony Awards featuring a medley from the show. And just from this one clip, I can see what I'd heard was right. While certainly looking horribly dated, it also looks like the best production I've ever seen of the show.
JC Superstar at 1972 Tonys

I remember Christ crucified on a triangle. Another thing I remembered was Pontius Pilate coming out in a Carmen Miranda headgear. His shoes looked like giant cinder blocks with straps

Would love to see it staged in period dress and done as an opera and not as a rock concert. It has never been done like that.


O. Horgan than went on to direct a string of flops Inner City (great show),Dude,Senator Joe.

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Updated On: 4/22/14 at 11:24 AM

It was a mess, but fascinating none-the-less. The costumes really stood out as they were over-the-top. The set wasn't much to speak of, but I do remember that the stage curtain became the stage deck. The show started with actors climbing up the walls of the curtain and sort of pushing it down to become a very steeply raked floor.

The show was amplified with corded mikes that were designed to look like vines - or perhaps seaweed based on an earlier post above. They were unruly and often got tangled.

Tom O'Horgan was at his peak as a Broadway director. In addition to Hair, there was also Dude (huge bomb, but also fascinating), and Inner City (another interesting, but ill fated musical). I also remember seeing something at The Public that was directed by him. It was a sort of sci-fi thing where the sun had ceased to shine, but I can't remember the name.

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Updated On: 4/22/14 at 11:38 AM

Would love Inner City @ Encores.

There needs to be a bizarro like encores for shows like Dude and Rockabye Hamlet

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I saw the tour- I remember the corded microphones and the steeply raked stage. And who came up out of the floor and "wore" the stage deck- was it Jesus during "superstar"?

The concept album came out in 1970, and I remember my sister playing it all the time and liking it, although not as much as she did.

But by the time it opened on Broadway, I had seen Company and Follies several times each, and I was hopelessly blase about anything non-Sondheim. I had seen Tom O'Horgan's production of Hair two years earlier and had loved that--especially when my friends and I went up on the stage at the end--but the Broadway experience of Jesus Christ Superstar didn't have the excitement of Hair or the excitement my sister had felt for the concept album.

I've since come to think that Tom O'Horgan was a wild visionary who lucked into doing the Broadway version of Hair after Gerald Freedman had directed the original production of Hair at the Public Theater. So all of the warm, touchy-feely "tribe" stuff had already been put into the cast and production of Hair, as well as whatever coherence there was to the storyline.

All O'Horgan did for Hair was add some wild visuals and the Zeitgeist made it a hit. And everything O'Horgan did after that was a weird visual mess.

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Here are some production photos

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An expanded view of the TIME picture (also the cast album cover).

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Updated On: 4/22/14 at 03:34 PM

Perhaps this is the aforementioned "carmen miranda" getup?

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The triangle crucifixion.

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