Dusting off JC Superstar

A search of cyberspace engines would reveal two extant, fairly recent local productions of the enduring rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, one the Atlantis production revolving around the now hibernating Wolfgang, the other the annual Bistro 70s affair starring various often cause-oriented artists led by Noel Cabangon as Jesus and Rico Blanco as Judas.

It has been a long time since we first stumbled on the opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, way back when on lip-synch limited but free Holy Week TV where Bernardo Bernardo as Jesus, Tommy Abuel as Judas, and Laurice Guillen as Mary Magdalene literally mouthed the words as sung in the first major concept album of the time, along with the Who’s Tommy.

Can you imagine Bernardo trying to come across as Ian Gillam of Deep Purple fame, whose JC rendition remains to our ears the best ever? For those who doubt Gillam’s vocal range and sheer metal dynamics, listen only to Deep Purple’s Speed King and Child in Time (both from Deep Purple in Rock) and forever keep your peace.

Or Guillen doing her version of Yvonne Eliman in I Don’t Know How to Love Him, long before Guillen turned film actress and subsequent director, and the Hawaiian-born Eliman became vocalist of Eric Clapton’s band in one of Slowhand’s tightest outfits.

Tommy Abuel a la Murray Head was patently convincing, complete with abject writhing and drooling delirium.

That was then but this is now, though lip-synch itself has hardly gone away. Of recent years perhaps the best JC we’ve seen and heard is Wolfgang’s Basti Artadi, when the opera was staged a couple or so Lenten seasons ago and starred, aside from Artadi, Bituin Escalante as Magdalene.

Artadi, whose heavy metal inclinations come closest to Gillam’s, does justice to the role, just as Wolfgang which swears by thrash can do battle with Deep Purple on any given arena.

Of the latest Bistro 70s production, folksinger Cynthia Alexander is cast as Magdalene, replacing past suki for the role Cooky Chua, who might have opted to take a break this time.

And Parokya ni Edgar’s Chito Miranda’s listing as Simon could indeed be a casting coup.

As for flashbacks, none can be truer than the Norman Jewison movie of the opera, with Ted Neeley as Jesus and Eliman again as Magdalene. Neeley’s voice, though not as commanding as Gillam’s, has its own charm and lambent power just waiting to be unleashed. It also has metal undertones and wants for nothing when it comes to doing vocal cartwheels.

During Holy Week programming on free TV, it would be fortunate to come across the Jewison film, Neeley certainly emoting better than, say, Victor Mature in The Robe.

In other parts of the archipelago at this time of year, youngsters are more enrapt with the pabasa or Christ’s passion, reciting the litany of the Cross –anywhere from street corners to underneath the shade of a santol tree, but in a postmodern rap and hip-hop style.

Of course the local bishops frowned on this, as expected, just as Christian purists frowned on JC Superstar when it was first released in 1970, certainly an epochal event in religious music as Woodstock was to free love and flower power jam. But then we’re beginning to sound dated like the bishop purists, because wouldn’t you think JC would have approved of his agony and ecstasy depicted just so, like yo?

It might even be a way to get wayward youth back on to the straight and narrow, seeing that rap and religion can also meet halfway, and all gangstas can step aside in the meantime.

As for JC Superstar, the opera did for that generation what nothing has done for the present one, so any production that would bring the lost sheep a little farther from mammon and closer to God or even a sort of epiphany, at least for a week, is a welcome one. We’re still dumbfounded by Gillam’s work from Purple to Superstar, although he was never cut out to sing the song Superstar, a ballad popularized by both Leon Russell and the Carpenters: "Loneliness is such a sad affair ... we fell in love before the second show..."