Copyright chicagoreader
I often tell people that my first exposures to both Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar came from my older sisters playing the original cast recordings back-to-back one summer. Consequently, it took me a long time to remember which songs were from which shows. (I didn’t encounter Leonard Bernstein’s musical, Mass—the third leg on the 1971 Christian musicals stool—until I was well into adulthood.) GodspellThrough 11/16: Wed 2 PM, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; ASL interpretation Sat 11/8; North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, musictheaterworks.com, $19.50-$106 (half price for 25 and younger) Godspell is, as a friend succinctly put it recently, the “silly” one of the three. Indeed, it’s often presented with actors in bright clothing and literal clown makeup. (The 1972 Toronto production launched the careers of a comedic murderers’ row, including Gilda Radner, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer.) Composer Stephen Schwartz went on to write Pippin and an obscure little show called Wicked.Now in an earnest revival with Music Theater Works under Matthew Silar’s direction, the show definitely shows its age. This production is presented with the sponsorship of Evanston’s Curt’s Café, which focuses on hiring young adults who are in at-risk situations. The set by Bob Knuth captures the feel of a homespun coffee house, with mismatched chairs, a colorful mural, and homemade curtains at the window. (Fans of Rent may also feel echoes of “La Vie Bohème.”) The book by John-Michael Tebelak is generally paint-by-numbers: at the urging of Jesus (Eldon Warner-Soriano), the cast, as part of an open mike, enacts various parables and stories from the gospels: Lazarus, the prodigal son, the rich fool. (The latter is a comic highlight thanks to Dani Pike, who delivers a spot-on Trump impression as the fool talks about tearing down his barns and building “big beautiful new barns” that “many people say are the best barns.”) Unlike Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar, which, as Reader staff writer Katie Prout noted a few years back, truly does delve into the deeper questions of what it means to live a just life as Christ commands, Godspell rests on lighter homilies. Silar’s production attempts to update this for our times: in addition to the Trump jokes, the “disciples” abandoning their electronic devices to come together seems like a not-so-subtle way of telling us to stop isolating ourselves on the Internet and get together with other people. And there’s a fun Wicked in-joke, along with other updated asides and interpolations. For me, the drawback of Godspell is that we don’t see a Jesus who is particularly torn between being the son of God and the son of man, which undercuts the profundity. That’s not Warner-Soriano’s fault: that’s the story. But though it’s not the most emotionally layered way of explicating the entwined costs and joys of embracing communality over individuality, the show still has its endearing moments. The actors (who also almost all take turns playing instruments to flesh out the four-piece orchestra under music director Justin Kono) turn it into a couple hours of conscious uplift that I suspect many could use right now.
