Singing His Praises

THE EXTRAVAGANZA now playing at Kirkland House is blessed with a lead actor who looks uncannily, definitively Messianic. From the moment Adam Isaacs strolls onstage in his white tunic, smiling and nodding at some 25 adoring followers, any doubts as to the feasibility of staging a gospel-inspired rock opera at a predominantly blow-dried university become moot. The illusion of Deeper Meaning holds. And in a show which draws about a third of its emotional impact from that illusion and another third from the power of an extraordinarily rich score, such a visual bonus is no small gain.

Those two thirds of success success make this very large and lavish Jesus Christ Superstar an excellent evening's entertainment, despite production weaknesses glaring enough to sink most theatrical endeavors. Staged in the massive Kirkland House JCR. Superstar involves close to 30 actors in a perpetual whirlwind of motion, as well as an extremely competent 14-person orchestra thumping away madly in the background. The script contains not a single line of spoken dialogue, unless you count Pontius Pilate yelling. "Twenty-two! Twenty-three! Twenty-four!" while Roman guards put Jesus to the lash. The rest is music numbers of the sliding, dazzling quality that marks the composer's better-known Evita and the lately revived Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

According to program notes, the intent of the script (which covers the last week of Jesus lite but ends before the Resurrection) is to portray a "human Jesus," and, by neither revering nor blaspheming, to explore the problems the Christ stars poses for modern youth. In performance, though, while the company takes some stabs in that direction emphasizing the sensual in Jesus's relationship with Mary Magdalen, for instance, and painting a startlingly sympathetic Judas-- they prove unable to maintain an even enough tone for such analysis Jesus's followers come across as suitably starry-eyed, dutifully and competently executing just a trifle too muchchoreography; the Apostles, confusingly enough, are written as insensitive, wine-soaked and opportunistic sods who don't know what's happening under their noses, making Judas shine by comparison. The Romans are comically and stereotypically nasty, except when they cross the line into perversely effective high camp. Caiaphas and the High Priests fool everyone late in Act I, pulling an unexpectedly macabre moment out of the end of "This Jesus Must Die."

Terry Ray Robinson as Judas provides the single most powerful head of steam to keep the show moving through these cloudinesses of interpretation. His stage presence and confident characterization are matched by Chad Hummel as Pontius Pilate, who pads on and offstage like a lion, and Suzanne Tanner as a warm and believable Mary Magdalen. Isaacs, unfortunately, adds little to the pivotal role of Jesus besides his face; his voice and assurance improve markedly toward the end of the show, but his projection of any moral leadership or savior-like attributes at all wavers.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the music is dynamite. The 27 musical numbers proceed with dizzying energy, so much that any subtleties of emphasis or dramatic are lost in the excitement. Suzanne Tanner's stunnngly beautiful rendition of "I Don't Know How to Love Him," for instance, loses much of its deserved emphasis because Tanner plunges into it with hardly a breath's break after finishing her previous number, the equally well-executed "Everything's All Right."

Most scene changes follow a simple blackout-and-switch-the scenery-around scramble which soon becomes a bit too bouncy for comfort. The massive and ambitious vocal climaxes--such as an attempted coordination of offstage and onstage choruses--lead to moments of towering brilliance and intervals of embarrassing chaos in about equal proportion.

The unbeatable plotline helps out considerably in Act Two, when the production begins to pick up momentum and emotional intensity. From the start of Jesus's ordeal, both the staging and the actors confidence begin to reach new heights, propelled along by a chorus whose energy gradually stops seeming misplaced. The ambitions of director Christopher Charron and lighting designer Alyssa Haywoode appear to have grown apace; there are some remarkable effects, including one that makes Isaacs on the cross look like a yellowed medieval painting. At this point, matters of musical acumen or dramatic balance lose their urgency, and the question of whether, in fact, the thing is being well-executed takes on an embarrassing irrelevance. After all, we're talking about a play with precedent here.