Dixie Cups and Disciples

ELSIEBURGERS. DIXIE CUPS and a disciple imitating David Frye imitating Nixon--these marks of contemporary and peculiarly Harvard culture strike the dominant chord of John Manulis's production of Godspell. And not unfittingly. After all, the premise of Godspell is the special contemporary relevance of the Christian message. The show's book is the Good Book, and its lyrics mostly simple exhortations to faith; but here the Word is transplanted to a junkyard where the innocents who make themselves up as Jesus' disciples cavort in patchwork splendor.

Since faith in our age must be entertaining, it wears in Godspell all the trappings of musical farce, with the comic acting-out of Christian parables alternating with a lively rock and gospel-inspired score. The resultant blend is hardly the ultimate in sophistication--in this version of the Christian myth, the plot is stylized and the characterizations, save for Jesus, nearly non-existent.

What counts in Godspell, however, is the music, and Manulis assured this production's success by finding voices that do justice to it. There's no need to cast the first stone here--in fact, the vocal talents of the Godspell ensemble are almost uniformly impressive. Especially outstanding are David Alpert's moving rendition of "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord" and Kathy Evans' portrayal of an adulteress rescued by Jesus who expresses her gratitude in "By My Side." Stephen Hayes as Jesus has a melodic high tenor which makes up in sweetness what it lacks in strength, while Patty Woo sings the show's best-known number, "Day by Day," in a clear contralto.

The choreography of Godspell embodies the enthusiasm of the newly converted; most dance numbers reflect the influence of gospel rhythms, with hand-clapping and swaying bodies, and the exuberant spontaneity of exercise. The best number, however, is the soft shoe duet "All for the Best", which pits Jesus against Judas (David Alpert) for the first time.

The main problem with the book of Godspell is that the New Testament parables, linked though they are to the archetypal comic myth, are not themselves intrinsically funny. To convert dogma into entertainment, it's up to the director to make them so. Embellishing the original script with a few Harvard touches, Manulis marches his cast through a series of mimes, impressions and slapstick sequences in a laudable effort to compensate for the thinness of the material.

While Stephen Hayes plays Jesus with straight-faced gentleness (aside from a few Groucho Marx imitations), other members of the ensemble excel at comic vignettes. Mary Soloschin is very funny as a frenetic old miser who heaps up his wealth in storehouses, Michael der Manuelian captures in excruciating grimaces the plight of a parched seed, and Don Marocchio's impersonation of our former president is painfully accurate. Manulis' directorial coup, however, is his dramatization of the parable of the prodigal son, which features strippers enticing the prodigal to the strains of "Hey, Big Spender" and the amazing vocal contortions of David Alpert as the narrator.

In addition to making the parables funny without sacrificing their fundamental seriousness, any production of Godspell must aim for a balance between an overall comic mood and the menacing undertones which dominate the second act. Here too Manulis, with the help of sometimes overly dramatic lighting, is generally successful. It takes a while for the troupe to establish the ominous mood foreshadowing the crucifixion, but by the time Jesus hangs on the cross--in this case, the junkyard fence--the tone is appropriately somber.

Given the limitations of their material, Manulis, the Grant-In-Aid Society et. al. have produced a Godspell where everything really is "all for the best." So when the show's talented cast cries out, "We beseech thee, hear us," it's worth paying heed, if only for an evening.