Why Jesus Christ Superstar Failed — Page 2

Egzacly Tag- Ouzanian was a BIG cheerleader and probably felt like a "G*dparent" in bringing this show to B'way- so now he'd pouting cos the child ain't the purtiest in the nursery.

*cough* J. Kelly Nestruck* cough*

To be fair, this Jesus has always been a cipher, since the first time they staged the show.

---

As a JCS fan and a producer, my two cents:

The author of this article refers to an "energetic marketing campaign." To which I say, what campaign? You know the marketing campaign has failed out of the gate when this article is the first anyone's heard of any "deluxe layout in Vanity Fair." (Well, first I've heard anyway.) Their little trailers did the opposite of helping. It's like they didn't bother to advertise because they thought the show would sell itself, but you need to have some line of bull that will get people into the seats even if the show sells itself. "A STARTLING NEW VISION," "A MONUMENTAL PRODUCTION," something like that. All they said, in essence, was, "JCS is back. Now buy tickets. We said buy them, dammit!" And it doesn't work that way.

Why? Well, Riedel's assertions in this article were spot on. I'll go one further, and say that Ted Neeley's last tour squeezed the remaining juice out of the lemon. Think about it: for the past few decades, there has been an over-saturation of JCS in this country. The 1990s gave us the "A.D. Tour," which reunited Neeley and Carl Anderson alongside a revolving door of stunt casting (Dennis DeYoung, Irene Cara, Syreeta Wright; a Variety story from '93 or so says Roger Daltrey was looking at joining this show -- presumably this was before The Who reunited and he didn't need to do a bus-and-truck tour of JCS to make money). The 2000s gave us ALW's attempt to stamp his typical "replicate-your-spectacle" approach all over the map, with the 2000 video, Broadway revival, and tour based on both with Sebastian Bach, Anderson, and others. And from 2006 through 2010, Neeley came back with the last nail in the coffin (or is that on the cross?).

The first thing this production should have been thinking about was that for several successive decades, people have been producing a professional run of the show in this country, and when they're not doing that, someone else is doing it at a high school, a church, a community center, a local auditorium, etc. Something really has to compel an audience to see this at Broadway prices on Broadway. The production needs to be (or needs to be perceived as) special. The talent needs to be (or needs to be perceived as) special. It's like buying a cell phone in this day and age -- it's great if you can talk to people on it, but we're over the mobility. If they're gonna buy this cell phone, it better not just be able to call people.

They did not deliver in terms of casting, but even that didn't need to be spot on. Marketing can turn crap into a goldmine and back again; just look at Charlotte Church's initial burst of fame. My guess is they got drunk on the out-of-town notices, which were love letters, and thought they could skate into town and find a less critical audience. They were clearly wrong.

What they failed to pay attention to was the buzz. The word of mouth was already bad about this production from the get-go; here, for example, the answer to "What's the buzz?" was "Not the good kind." By and large, people were/are saying this was an explosive production in the context of a repertory festival, but on Broadway, it's just a pebble in the ocean. And the critical reception, which a lot of people who were sitting on the fence about the show were waiting for in order to make their purchasing decision, was not what the show could have hoped for: in the eyes of many critics, it's just another ancient/modern mix. The popular perception is that essentially this production got to Broadway because the authors insisted it did, and if every production of an author's work that they said "should be on Broadway" did, we'd run out of theaters.

They weren't even good with reaching an audience who wanted to hear from them. They couldn't keep their website's mailing list active past previews; only e-mail I ever got from Dodger was the first announcement about group tickets being available.

A misfire all the way around.

---

Updated On: 6/21/12 at 12:34 AM

This man's hair. That's the leading cause of this show's closing. Oh, and it just sucked.

---

I don't think the article was saying that New York audiences were dumb for not seeing the versatility of the actors. It was saying that it was better received in Stratford because the audience there could see the versatility of the actors, having seen them in previous productions. New York audiences only got to see them in JCS, so they didn't get to see the versatility so they weren't as wowed. Seemed more like an observation than an accusation

It's just a horrible production of a great show. That's why it didn't work. I don't know what idiots saw this show and thought "Broadway," but they deserve to lose all their money.

I still don't know how Young got a Tony-nomination out of this. Now people are going to think what he's doing in the show is "good." And that he's really up there "acting." Oof.

Seeing actors in other performances can skew your view of another of their performances. When actors play the same character in everything they're in (Will Farrell, Zooey Deschanel) it's really boring for an audience and looks like bad acting (not saying that the aforementioned are actually good actors) and when you see them in contrasting roles the acting may seem better than it is. When there's nothing to compare it too, you see it more for what it is. So, the superb acting that people talked about before JCS got to Broadway, might not look as good when this is your first exposure to the actors.

I grew up listening to Ouzanian's CBC radio show on musicals, Say it with Music, which before the internet, was the only way to hear many shows for me, so I'll always be thankful he introduced me to so much musical theatre. But the guy really should not be a critic, or even theatre columnist. His arguments always contradict themselves, and as someone else mentioned, he seems to become more and more of a starf*cker (not to mention the way he would use his role to hype his own musicals, like the Stratfor Dracula, which have seemed pretty terrible to me).

Outof curiousity--while I know it's a completely different example, how were notices for the show in San Diego?

The show seems to have a lot of trouble "working" on stage, despite an often great score--I think it works better as a film. The clips of the original production are fascinating and apparently it was spectacular, but it was hardly loved or appreciated by audiences and seemed to still close a bit quicker than general (the subsequent much more simplistic London/Australian version was the only really long run that also seemed to get good press).

I saw the Gale Edwards production in London in the late 90s and, more or less, really liked it--the head-scratcher foprme was after it seemed to be fairly well reviewed, she completely restaged the show (not for the better) for the tour and Broadway production as well as the filmed video.

Why do they want to blame everything but the show?

The Tony performance was enough to show me this revival was misguided. I thought everything "visual" was terrible ... sets, lighting, costumes, choreography, cast ... they sounded fine, though. But not better than any previous recording of the score.

That's not enough for a Broadway revival to run. Sometimes, people think too hard.

The answer is simple ... the show wasn't good enough.

---

I don't know, I really enjoyed the show!

---

Um maybe audiences are tired of this religious crap? I mean I can't remember hearing a soul say "gee I wish Jesus Christ Superstar would get another revival."

Had this been given the John Doyle treatment MAYBE, and just maybe it would have been something new to see. This show looks just like the 2000 revival when it comes to marketing.

It's the same reason Godspell is complete failure. It's so weird to hear how much money was invested in these shows and the epic disasters they are.