JCS London Revival, 1996

Sorry, Sir Andrew...this under-your-personal-supervision revival just isn't as good as the Japanese version. (That may be my rating system from now on--"Is it above or below the Japanese standard?")
Steve Balsamo does well; you can take a look/listen yourself--here he is singing with his band The Storys. (H/T to Derek.) Now, don't you think he'd make a good Jesus? He hits some fantastic high notes in "Gethsamene," which was something the Japanese Jesus barely attempted and the BBC Jesus completely skipped. And I dug the refreshing take on "King Herod's Song," which cut out some of the mince while retaining all the vaudeville. "This Herod's really good," I thought.
Then I found out it was Alice Cooper.
Cool!
Now to the problems: bombast, bombast, bombast and bombast. Why oh why end "Everything's All Right" with a big ol' choral give-'em-all-you-got? They did this on the Beeb, too, and it bugged the heck out of me because I was liking that number until then. Not everything has to be pyrotechnic, kids.
Caiaphas and Co. come across here as moustache-twirling melodrama villains, and I think that's also a mistake. I think they'd be more menacing if they were played a bit more straight. Caiaphas has a genuine concern for his country's welfare. He just also has a really low voice.
Some lyrics have been changed for this production--not "a jaded mandarin," sad to say--that still made the cut! Most interesting to me: instead of
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
Pilate here sings
But what is truth? Not easy to define.
We both have truths. Are yours the same as mine?
...which doesn't have the same zing. I don't get why ol' Tim would want to change it.
I should also note that I listened to this one out of order. I was supposed to listen to this one first, not the BBC version. My partner in JCSdom worked quite hard on a Lenten running order, so my apologies to him for getting off sequence.