(3 of 7)
On these terms Jesus Christ Superstar is simply a pop musical forced to stand in for "the greatest story ever told." It does not pretend to span the enormous scope of the Gospels, simply the last seven days in Jesus' life but with the divinity of Christ and the Resurrection left out. JCS was created by two talented, engaging young Englishmen, Lyricist Tim Rice, 26, and Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, 23.
They admit that they were fascinated by "the incredible drama" of the Christ story, as well as by a number of human perplexities: Why, for example, did everything go so wrong for Jesus? Why didn't he choose to make his appearance on earth today, when he could have the benefit of mass communications to teach his followers? Armed with a paperback edition of Fulton J. Sheen's Life of Christ, which compares and calibrates the Gospel stories, Lloyd Webber and Rice burrowed and borrowed from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to create a libretto. The first three Gospels, says Rice, seem more dependable, since John "was much hotter on visions and supernatural things." They concentrated on Christ's reputation as a humanitarian thinker, the charismatic leader of a dissident movement and a victim who might variously suggest latter-day martyrs like Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. "A big point of Superstar," Rice explains, "is to show the way people react to him."
No one in Superstar reacts to Jesus quite like Judas. Indeed, to the extent that the show has any personal continuity, it is carried by the relationship between them. Lloyd Webber and Rice admit to a feeling that history and the Scriptures have been unkind to Judas. If Christ was really divine, after all, then Judas was merely the instrument of his will. And if Christ was merely a great teacher and prophet who in mid-career fell prey to delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex, then Judas —those 30 pieces of silver aside—was merely doing what he thought was right. The latter is the view, anyway, suggested by Jesus Christ Superstar. From the beginning, Judas worries about Jesus the way a friend and key adjutant would advise an adored rock singer who has gone spoiled, or the leader of a political movement who suddenly begins to take his press notices seriously:
Jesus! You've started to believe The things they say of you You really do believe This talk of God is true And all the good you've done Will soon be swept away You've begun to matter more Than the things you say. . . They think they've found the new Messiah And they'll hurt you when they find they're wrong
And at one point, enraged Judas even threatens to thwart Jesus' outrageous ambitions by not betraying him at all.