Since I sang some of the chorus numbers in an Easter celebration at school in the early 70s this has been one of my favourite musicals. Well, let me qualify that, this has been one of my favourite sets of songs - the music and lyrics I love, the staging hasn't always excited.
This is a full-n production, loud, pacey and exciting - really difficult not to sing along to! Having said that, the impressive set seemed to restrict the cast to a small square in the middle and I wonder if, in the first half, Tim Rogers' foldback wasn;t working as Judas was a bit off.
Congrats to the sound crew - many a touring production fails to get the Hippodrome acoustics right and simply cranks up the volume at the expense of distorition and feedback ... no such issues last night though there was excessive use of echo which was rather distracting (and dated!) though that must have been a production choice.
Cavin Cornwall's Caiaphas was fabulous. Not only does he have an amazing voice, his movement throughout was spectacular, if a little vampire-spooky at times .... brilliant. I lioke the interpretation of mary by Rachel Adedeji but whilst Glenn Carter's Jesus was pitch perfect throughout it lacked "personality" ...
This was a great evening out ... but did leave me persoanlly with a niggling wonder if I wouldn't rather have put the soundtrack album on really loud and just revelled in the glorious music.
Still, a rare chance to see this classic of British musical theatre