The music for Jesus Christ Superstar was written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber 55 years ago and the first theatre production on Broadway of the rock opera came a year later. The many productions since then are a tribute to the enduring quality of the music and lyrics, directed in this Watermill production by Paul Hart.

It covers the period from Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem to his crucifixion and burial. As usual at the Watermill, the 18-strong cast are mostly actor-musicians and the music comes through loud and strong throughout.

Jesus (Michael Kholwadia) provides a calming presence between his supporters and opponents. Judas (Max Alexander-Taylor), central to the story, is concerned that Jesus’s supporters could lead to reprisals from the Romans and sides with the Pharisees who demand that Jesus must die. Judas agrees to betray Jesus to them for 30 pieces of silver.

After the interval the action moves outside into the garden, representing the garden of Gethsemane where Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss and Peter denies he knows Jesus.

Back into the theatre for the final scenes leading to Jesus’s crucifixion and Judas’s suicide.

There’s so much to say about this play. It’s entirely sung, with the cast of 18 singing and mostly playing instruments. The quality of the singing is exceptional, with special praise for Michael Kholwadia, Parisa Shahmir as Mary Magdalene and Olugbenga Adelekan as Caiphas. The acting is great too, including fine performances from Christian Edwards as Pilate and Samuel Morgan-Grahame as Herod. But I found it a bit overwhelming at times. There was constant movement around the small stage – exciting, and beautifully choreographed by Anjali Mehra – and combining that with the music and singing there is so much going on that it’s easy to miss bits. But you can let the beautiful music flow over you.

The set and lighting (David Woodhead and Rory Beaton) in the theatre give a dark, church-like interior with a wide range of lighting effects. Outside, Gethsemane is a circular space with audience seated around it and a large fire in the middle.

Following their successes in the last two years with the musicals Barnum and The Lord of the Rings the Watermill have done it again with an exciting and moving production, with a huge amount to take in, meriting a second visit. Bravo!

PAUL SHAVE

Sing Hosanna for an intimate biblical epic

With actors doubling as musicians in this small-scale but intense Lloyd Webber revival, our Peter not only denies his Lord three times, but plays a decent guitar

★★★★☆
Holy moly, it’s been a week of extremes for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Seventies blockbusters. At the 2,200-seat London Palladium, Rachel Zegler’s Evita is a megawatt masterclass. You can’t always hear the hyperamplified words, but it’s thrilling. Here at the 220-seat Watermill near Newbury, meanwhile, a large cast of actor-musicians fill a small space with dainty aplomb. What this Superstar loses in oomph, it gains in intimacy.

Paul Hart’s concise production ensures you hear every syllable of Rice’s nimble lyrics. It moves unfussily from song to song and even takes the audience into the theatre’s garden to sit around a fire pit for The Last Supper.

Mostly, David Woodhead’s design keeps us indoors in a church: candles flicker in the alcoves, Pharisees loom around the altar, and at one point Samuel Morgan-Grahame’s entertaining Herod emerges from the sacristy in a PVC outfit flanked by a similarly kinky chorus. I’m not quite sure why, but it’s the show’s moment for fun, and it grabs it. Hosanna!

The singing is strong. Michael Kholwadia is a slight, brooding Jesus in a vest. Max Alexander-Taylor is a stentorian Judas whose playing of his electric guitar turns discordant once he loses the plot. Parisa Shahmir’s Mary Magdalene strums her acoustic and cuts through the prog-rock density of the opening with this 1971 show’s catchy favourite, Everything’s Alright.

The New Testament travails continue to a near-electrifying score. I say “near” because Hart and his musical director, Stuart Morley, put their live drums low in the mix sometimes, and while I’m all for audible vocals the players and singers alike sometimes need something more muscular to push them forward. A rock opera should rock, after all. Gethsemane, the second-act belter that is the Cresta Run for any Jesus, is adroit rather than exhilarating.

Yet there’s a lucidity and a fluidity here that keep you hooked. Olugbenga Adelekan impresses as Caiaphas, at one point singing and playing bass from the top of a far-away fire escape. Way cool.

Seb Harwood’s posh Peter not only denies his Lord three times, but plays a decent guitar. Others flit between horns, keyboards, flutes and strings (which wobbled a little bit on final preview). Anjali Mehra’s choreography works wonders in a small space.

I hope, and suspect, the tamer musical moments will find some fangs as this long run goes on. In any case, my cavils clocked off for the night as we headed towards final reckonings in an intense last half-hour. It’s not quite a miracle, but this small-scale Superstar is certainly a success.

DOMINIC MAXWELL

Innovative, emotional revival is divinely inspired

A quirk of the diary has seen revivals of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s two 1970s super-musicals – Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar – open in England within three days. Seen together, they are remarkably similar in structure. An anguished narrator – Judas in 33 AD; Che in the mid-20th century – provokes and rebukes a protagonist to whom sanctity is attributed – Jesus; Eva – and who threatens the political classes with a revolution. Paul Hart’s staging for his innovative riverside venue in Berkshire benefits – as does Jamie Lloyd’s London Palladium Evita – from the current rise of political and religious populism, giving shows either side of 50 years old a strikingly topical context.

Hart uses seventeen actor-musicians, strumming or blowing between lines, with only the title character not playing an instrument, making Jesus look like a vocalist with a massive backing band. But the power of the production is how the cast devastatingly excavate the emotion in the lyrics. Clearly knowing from the outset that he must die – and that his human incarnation makes him sometimes dread and fear this – Michael Kholwadia’s Jesus, unlike the serene hippy-magician in some productions, embodies the “haunting, hunted” look described by Christian Edwards’ Pilate, whose “Pilate’s Dream” is also sung in a tone closer to nightmare.

This emphasis on the horror that Christ’s mission and passion would have caused to those around him extends to Parisa Shahmir’s tinglingly sung Mary Magdalene. By unusually stressing the line “He scares me so” in I Don’t Know How To Love Him, she makes exceptional sense of the later reboot plea, Could We Start Again, Please?

Conversely, the Judas of Max Alexander-Taylor, displaying an extraordinary harmonic range, is more complex than the simple Biblical baddie. He truly believes that he is doing the right and nation-saving thing, as zealots everywhere will.

With stage managers watching the sky as beadily as cricket umpires, the second half starts, if weather allows, outside in the Watermill grounds. The advantage is that the Gethsemane sequence takes place in an actual garden, but the inevitable delay in getting the audience back to their seats for the trial and crucifixion means that a show of otherwise exemplary pace briefly stalls.

Lloyd-Webber still attracts much snideness but recent revivals of his Sunset Boulevard (with Don Black and Christopher Hampton) and now this twice-Rice mini-festival with Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar, leave me happy to say that he is a great musical drama composer, tackling unlikely dark material in scores that perfectly serve both the tragic and comic notes of his librettists.

MARK LAWSON