Why Jesus Christ Superstar Failed - Page 2

[SNAFU]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 11:49pm

I remember the original production which was visually stunning!Now this is a Tony award show performance!

http://www.bluegobo.com/production/2880866/video/10625

[sabrelady]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 11:51pm

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.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/20/12 at 11:52pm

It's sweet though. I mean, he actually came up with people not listening right and only seeing what was onstage. I think I love his reasoning.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 12:07am

*cough* J. Kelly Nestruck* cough*

[quizking101]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 12:11am

I caught the matinee on the perchance today since some lady gave me a comp ticket as I walked by ten minutes before curtain.

I left with a screaming headache and the feeling I had just been slapped across the face.

The show wasn't bad, but there was virtually nothing to praise (except Josh Young, since he carried this show). I almost wish there was something that would have tipped the scales for me in other direction, because the sheer mediocrity left me completely mentally blank.

Paul Nolan as Jesus was terrible, as he had only two modes: Rock-shouting the music or staring blankly into the audience or in space.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 12:16am

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

[sabrelady]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 12:19am

Good point Namo. The director needs to elicite a performance out of whoever is playing JC and frankly, they rarely do- prefering to let the audience "project" their own vision of JC onto a relatively blank slate.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 12:34am

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

[SondheimFan5]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 12:59am

I don't think Hewitt/Carver is much of an argument - had it been better directed and had a better cast all-around, it could have been a much better show. But that's like saying that had you conceived your child with another partner, the child could have grown up to be more successful.

It is a matter of the show being over-exposed within the last 15 years. There have been tons of bus-and-trucks, non-eq's, Ted Neeley, the 2000 DVD, high school productions, etc. It's not a show or production that people WANT to see.

[wicked1492]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 1:04am

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

[Paul W. Thompson]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 1:08am

Oh, my! So much to say "oh, my!" about in that video. Love the microphone work! And that's a lot of backphrasing, Yvonne. I was worried!

[Bwaydide92]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 1:33am

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

[SNAFU]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 1:48am

Right so we are to start viewing and judging shows because of the performer's previous work to fully appreciate them? Wow she didn't do well as Mary, but she was one kick ass Evita! Love her in JCS!

[RippedMan]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 1:50am

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.

[Kad]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 1:59am

It bears noting that other than the original production, JCS doesn't exactly have a fantastic track record on Broadway. Its three subsequent revivals have not finished a year of performances. Or half a year.

I think it's a good score.

It is not, however, foolproof at all. It needs to be very carefully conceived and directed. Otherwise it's something incredibly inert.

[Bwaydide92]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 2:11am

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.

[My Oh My]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 2:56am

Chucking of the string section!!1!1!!!!!!!

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 3:18am

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.

[AnythingGoes23]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 5:30am

Its never really worked on Broadway.

It needed a "star" of some degree and as we all said - there is no buzz. It was flat from the moment it started at The Neil Simon.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 8:11am

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.

[The Scorpion]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 8:32am

Why do they want to blame everything but the show?

Yes, to be honest, I wasn't impressed by the production, and I really wanted to be as JCS is a favourite of mine. But aside from the Lyceum version, I have yet to see any production of it that works. I'm becoming more and more convinced that maybe it just doesn't work well as a stage show and is best listened to as an album.

I thought the direction of this revival was extremely messy with some very odd choreography. This is the second Des McAnuff-directed production I've seen and I didn't like the other I saw either (that was a production of Gounod's Faust), so maybe he just isn't my cup of tea.

And am I alone in thinking that Josh Young couldn't handle the score? I don't really understand his Tony nomination at all.

I agree that the US has been oversaturated with JCS (in a way the UK hasn't, actually; it would have probably done better coming over to London than to New York, but I suppose that was not going to happen what with ALW's ridiculous TV-reality-show-cast arena tour he wants to do that Tim Rice didn't approve of). I also think the minute ALW went on and on about how the show should go to Broadway (I hate how he does that with any show he sees and vaguely likes; he knows just because he says it that it'll make the papers), the producers became starstruck and jumped the gun a little. There was no advanced build-up because the transfer was so quick and Broadway was already getting Evita.

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.

I don't understand either why on earth the Lyceum production, which was a critical hit in London and the ONLY production of the show I have seen that actually worked for me, was not the one that went to Broadway. The production that DID go to become the 2000 revival and that went to video was hideous IMHO. The design and concept of the 1996 production was so much classier (it also had a superb cast, with an extremely good Jesus and Judas in Steve Balsamo and Zubin Varla). I've heard different reasons for why the production was reconceived; one person told me that the John Napier set was difficult to tour, but why that should have precluded the production from a transfer to Broadway I don't know. Another told me that John Napier and ALW fell out (wouldn't surprise me, as he seems to have a penchant for alienating his collaborators), but I don't know if this is true.

And I can't believe Ben Vereen said "Stanford" at the Tonys!! Is there a clip of this online at all?

By the way, can anyone tell me whether the original production was a hit financially? I know that the writers didn't like it for artistic reasons, but how did it do at the box office? I thought it didn't run for THAT long; certainly nothing on the 8-year-long run the original London production had.


Updated On: 6/21/12 at 08:32 AM

[BwayEqs]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 10:20am

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

[Wynbish]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 10:27am

What did you enjoy, BwayEqs? I am dying to know your full opinion of the show.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 10:52am

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.

[Outoftowner2]

Posted: 6/21/12 at 10:53am

I love this show..sounds like this production didn't do it for most, though I didn't see it. I did see the Tony Clip. As much as I love JCSS...I really dislike the title song. It's dated, kind of cheesy and unless you're Carl Anderson or Ben Vereen, those improvised Judas runs near the end are going to sound kind of lame without seeing the whole show first. Someone suggested "Heaven on Their Minds" instead...great song. Saw Neeley and Anderson on stage many times and it seems like this production would only make me miss that one even more.