Is that a man-bun I see before me? Sam Ryder walks on to stage – guitar slung, garms floaty – like a backpacker into a hostel bar. Many times I have watched his type at work: drawing in disciples with their tall tales and persuasive charms. Yet Ryder, our messiah, is rather less compelling. The superstar now cast as Jesus puts down his guitar, and seems lost in the wilderness.
Ryder’s Christ is meek and mild: he hangs, reluctantly, at the edge of the stage, or postures awkwardly before a worshipping crowd. His voice is his gift, his falsetto high as the heavens; the fans outside the stage door who have come for this – for their Eurovision Space Man – will not be disappointed. But he appears almost to hold back, preserving his energy until his blistering Gethsemane earns him an ovation. “What’s the buzz?... Let me try to cool down your face a bit,” sings Mary Magdalene (an easy-breezy Desmonda Cathabel) to the low-key lover who has barely broken a sweat.
This West End revival of Tim Sheader’s hit 2016 production, which reimagined Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera as an arena gig, is simultaneously amped up and hemmed in. Mic wires dangle from the ceiling, then bind wrists; some audience members stand pressed against barriers on stage, almost within garment-touching distance – £25 a head for the full biblical experience. Designer Tom Scutt’s cross-shaped, cross-stage ramp is a monumental trip hazard that forces the excellent ensemble – pulsing and purging in Drew McOnie’s athletic choreography – into one corner, while the warehouse scaffolding erected, in that familiar non-specific fashion, offers no context, and seems an oddly generic backdrop to a score so unpredictable and imaginative.
Rice and Lloyd Webber conspired with Judas to give him the best songs, and a tortured Tyrone Huntley, Olivier-nominated when he played the part 10 years ago, is exceptional in the demanding role. Did he steal Christ’s passion? In the second act, Ryder finds his feet as he is bound, bloodied and beaten. Lashed – 39 times – with fistfuls of glitter, he is dazzlingly downtrodden. Silenced, the man whose voice is his power takes his place on a cross made of mic stands, crucified by the very thing that saved him.
Jesus Christ Superstar is at the London Palladium until 5 September
Photograph by Johan Persson
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