Cut
to the Chase
at the Queen's
Theatre Hornchurch
19.05.2014
Somewhere
between Hair and Superstar there was Godspell, a free-love, feel-good
take on St Matthew with some pretty good songs.
Matt
Devitt's bold re-staging almost convinces that it's worth reviving.
The playground is now a grungy concrete wilderness, skateboard
ramp, wire fences and graffiti which includes some sneaky sacred
imagery. Plus
of course a keyboard and drum-kit for the actor/musicians who power
the show. The
clowns are now random performers, in hoodies for the opening, where
the philosophers and thinkers [plus L Ron Hubbard] are googled,
kicking off with an Essex-accented Socrates.
Musically
the show sounds superb [the
MD is Julian Littman],
with a super-charged rock-rhythmic pulse for the noisy
numbers, and, just as effective, simple guitar accompaniment for the
more reflective moments, like The Willows, or By My Side, a survival
from the original stateside student entertainment that started it
all. Wisely, the crosstalk vaudeville All For The Best remains
unrevised, and is brilliantly delivered. Only Turn Back O Man
disappoints – superbly sung, but really needs a slinky chanteuse to
make sense of the style.
The
show is eager to please, with its naïve joy in the word of the Lord,
but can seem predictable with each parable acted out with naïve
enthusiasm,
and one clap-along worship song after another. So Devitt skilfully
keeps things fresh with constant clever touches: the hypocrites in a
supermarket trolley, the
water into wine, George
Formby and his ukulele as Abraham, Alan Sugar as the rich man –
nice to think he'll never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And,
alongside all the cartoonish New Testament characters and the
sketch-show acting, there are moments of real reflection.
The prog-rock crucifixion, red ribbons against the wire fence,
foreshadowed in the Baptist's washing of Christ's out-stretched arms,
is followed by the simple sincerity of the Deposition. We are left
with a more typically upbeat finale, of course, All You Need Is Love
on the screens, the audience clapping along to the Megamix medley.
Wonderfully
outgoing performances from these ten actor/musicians; Queen's
newcomers Patrick Burbridge and Deborah Hewitt impress
instrumentally, too, on guitar and violin. Sean Needham is
a darkly powerful presence as Judas, and also John the Baptist in the
opening sequence, in which Sam Korbacheh's Messiah is discovered
wrapped in a blanket. His Jesus radiates intensity and love – a
very charismatic figurehead for a cult.
The
original Godspell struck a chord, on both sides of the Atlantic, with
the generation who went to Sunday School in the 50s and to college in
the revolutionary 60s. Does it have any resonance today, when
the cynical Book of Mormon is our West End view of religion
? Or, even in this eager-to-please reworking, is it just a feel-good
sequence of songs and sketches ?
production photograph by Nobby Clark
this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews
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