JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR • TEMPELHOF HANGAR 4

★★★★★☆

Photo: Jan Windszus

REVIEW JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR BERLIN: ROCK SHOW FROM HEAVEN

With Jesus Christ Superstar, the then unknown duo Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice hammered the rock musical into popular culture.

This landmark work from the early 1970s opens the Komische Oper season in Berlin, where a spectacular mega-production in Hangar 4 at Tempelhof Airport has wowed the critics. GOT TO SEE THIS was invited to the highly hyped – and already sold-out – new production, which manifested itself as a rock show from heaven

With up to 500 performers, including 350 dancers in astonishing mass choreographies, Andreas Homoki’s monumental staging of Superstar is a wild mix of rock concert, mass hysteria, heartfelt love and inevitable doom.

The performance is a codified rock spectacle in striking, Eurovision-style costumes, which are effective in the huge aircraft hangar, where terrible acoustics repeatedly threaten to undermine the excellent music of Superstar. Hollow, booming drums and overdriven, resounding bass seem out of soundcontrol, but thankfully shine by their absence in quiet numbers such as I Don’t Know How To Love Him, which goes straight to the heart.

Director and theatre manager Andreas Homoki, who has just stepped down as the successful and immensely popular director of the Zurich Opera, returns with Superstar to his old homeground, the Komische Oper, where he is a former director and, incidentally, appointed Barrie Kosky as his successor.

The music is early Lloyd Webber, a mixture of rock, pop, gospel, folk, funk, soul and avant-garde classical with a solid rock band at the forefront. Not quite as refined as its successor Evita – but with an obvious, simple energy, more singable hit melodies and more of a penchant for straight rock than later works by the composer.

It all started as a concept album in 1970, which was adapted for the stage the following year and performed on Broadway as a series of songs with no dialogue between them – and virtually no set design.

Nevertheless, it went quite well. Superstar soon broke all records on both Broadway and in the West End and is now believed to have earned up to 2450 million eur. Andrew Lloyd Webber is currently England’s richest musician, sharing first place with Paul McCartney.

In the raw aircraft hangar, Superstar is staged as a rock concert with the band positioned on a wide platform at first-floor height in front of a giant staircase that can slide apart in the middle and open up to a huge catwalk/ runway, where the performers can reach right out to the middle of the hall, surrounded by a sea of dancers who act as both a rock audience and cheering crowds of Jesus followers in Middle Eastern rags.

Heavy rock dominates the soundscape, alternating with moving ballads. The charismatic singer Ilay Bal Arslan, bald and dressed in seductive Tosca red, is a scoop as Mary Magdalene, who early in the story is criticized for being bad PR for the increasingly popular demagogue Jesus. It is now commonly accepted among independent researchers that both Jesus and Mary really lived.

The rock opera draws on the story of the last seven days of Jesus’ life, focusing not least on Judas, who is usually portrayed as a selfish traitor, but who turns out to be a more complex personality.

Judas is a huge fan, but concerned about Jesus’ hysterical popularity, which could provoke the Roman occupying power to intervene and make life miserable for everyone. I think you know your Bible history well enough to know how it ends.

Was Jesus and did he even want to be the Superstar he was made out to be, asks the show, which has provoked authorities on both the right and the left throughout the ages. However, the pope at the time supported the musical when he realised that it could convey a Christian message to new audiences.

The finale comes after a bitingly evil whipping scene with all the pyrotechnics it can muster, when a giant cross mounted with the wildest show lights is lowered from the ceiling , while a proper volley from the gold confetti cannons turns things upside down and transforms the tragedy into a party with 350 dancers in ecstasy throughout the hall to the familiar, fanfare-like Superstar anthem.

OMG! Five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS .