Forty-one years after its Broadway debut, Jesus Christ Superstar has made a roaring comeback. Playing at the Neil Simon Theatre since March, it has received enthusiastic reviews and been nominated for two Tony Awards – “Best Revival of a Musical” and “Best Featured Actor” for the performance of Josh Young, who plays Judas.
This show just won’t quit. It’s been playing off Broadway, traveling around the country and the world, to packed houses for four decades. I can’t help but smile. Superstar was a formative cultural experience of my youth. When it was made into a movie in 1973, it was roundly condemned by every adult I knew who had an opinion about it. Conservative folk were appalled at the depiction of Jesus as a rock singer. (Rock music was widely suspected to be the primary contributor to the moral degradation of teen youth.) Liberals chastised the production for being racist (by casting a black man, Carl Anderson, as Judas) and anti-Semitic (for portraying Jews as villains).
It survived all that criticism and now seems rather tame in the world of entertainment. But in the 1970’s, it was radical stuff. The fact that stodgy adults dismissed it out-of-hand made it all the more appealing to the younger set. When I was 14, a friend of mine who owned the original double LP let me borrow it so I could dub it onto a cassette. My parents were not pleased. But one day, while I
