JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

The play, Jesus Christ Superstar, came out in the 70’s when I was in high school. It was part of the whole hippie movement taking place and was considered somewhat radical for the times. Coming from a highly conservative Lutheran background, and since the church disapproved of this new latest and greatest version of Jesus’ life story, I never went to see it. Through the years it has had its revival periods on the stages of Broadway and in movie versions. But, I still never managed to see it. This year it is at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater, which is a local dinner theater featuring Broadway hits and other local plays. It has been around for a long time and is a big part of the Twin Cities theater world. When I saw the advertising for the play, I was surprised to see Thrivent Financial as its major supporter. Thrivent Financial used to be called Aid Association for Lutherans and they have strong ties to the Lutheran Churches, especially in the Midwest. But, times change and now the Lutheran Churches are endorsing this play. So since Thrivent was offering a special price to its account holders, I decided to make a reservation to see the show. The theater’s dinner tables seat six so unless you have a party of six, you will be seated with strangers. It can be a great way to meet people and we were seated next to two sisters, one who had recently been living in the Twin Cities and her sister who was visiting from Florida. The conversation lent itself to revealing intimate personal information regarding cancer, fighting to live and how we can depend on family. You just never know who will you meet and how they will touch your lives. As for the play, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t even know what the story was really about, except it was about Jesus. If there are any others out there who don’t know, it’s about Jesus’ life but mainly focuses on his last days and ends with his death on the cross. So you may want to know if I liked it. After all the hype I guess I was expecting it to be different and better than it was. Now I know, no one really knows for sure what Jesus looked like, but he was Jewish and they almost always had black hair and olive skin. The actor who played Jesus had sandy blond hair, so I had a hard time visualizing him in the role of Jesus. The way he portrayed Jesus’ demeanor came across as extremely winey, which just didn’t work for me either. Other than that, the rock music was performed extremely well and the costumes were unique almost reminding me of Steam Punk attire. If the point of the play and movie was to have it viewed by the masses, the producers have more than likely achieved that. Unfortunately if the point of the show was to tell the story of Jesus, the Son of God who was the Savior of the World, I think the message came across as the story of Jesus, a Man who was just a Superstar.