Jesus Christ Superstar

Jesus Christ Superstar
Vanemuine (Suvelava)
Lavastaja: Georg Malvius
 
Mängivad: Stephan Hansen (Norra), Vaiko Eplik, Liisi Koikson, Alexander Lycke (Rootsi)

Järgnev on võetud minu päevikust, kuna sattusin sinna poolkogemata JCS'ist kirjutama ja ei oskagi nagu midagi lisada.

I managed to get a Friday off amidst all the busyness and go to Tartu to see Jesus Christ Superstar with Mum and her friend. I'm (hopefully) going to write about it more in the theatre section but some words about it here - it was OK. Maybe I would've liked it better if there hadn't been some distracting factors (AKA the Rain from Hell*) but I doubt it. The songs were good, the acting didn't bother me much and the stage wasn't as awful as some people made it out to be. I think it was the subject matter that made JCS hard for me to grasp.

*JCS was an open-air show. And before the end of the first act it started to rain. And it wasn't some mild rain that you barely notice. No! It was the ultimate rain! The rain that you feel through your sweater, two jackets and the raincoat you barely had time to put on. The rain that bounces off the leather jacket of the guy in front of you (who turned out to be the previous Minister of Agriculture but that's another story) and manages to wet your glasses with a single drop. The rain that comes down with such a force that the sound it creates makes it impossible to hear anything coming out of the speakers and see anything that is more than a meter away from you. The rain that finally turns to hail in an effort to pry the people from their seats.

You see, I'm an agnostic. I don't believe in God or any other deity and I don't mind if you do, as long as you're not trying to get me to convert. After Estonia regained its independence and we got back the churches I went through a phase where I wanted to be christened, not because I particularly believed in God but because "all the cool kids were doing it". It was the reaction to the liberation from the Socialist State, where there could be no gods, and everyone was going to church. I read the children's bible twice and figured I knew enough to make an informed decision. Unfortunately you needed the parents' consent to be christened and my father refused to give his. I remember being furious and plotting ways to get around it. But I eventually lost interest and the fad ended pretty soon. And when I grew up I realized that the desire had nothing to do with being closer to God - it was just another desperate attempt to get further away from the country's socialist past by doing everything that was forbidden during the 50 occupation years.

My point is that my problem with JCS wasn't that I didn't know about the subject matter. I knew enough to see that it had been mixed and messed with to make a better production and I could recognize most of the characters and understand what was their part in the outcome. The problem was that I was detached from the characters. Half through the show I started thinking about religion in general and why is it that people define their essence through suffering. Why does suffering and denying yourself make you holy in the eyes of God and man? Why is God made out to be a vengeful deity and why has it been the same for thousands of years and hundreds of other gods? Why did people create their deities to the likeness of themselves and not better than themselves?

I didn't find the answers in JCS. It was a musical, there weren't meant to be any answers there. But there wasn't any emotion either. I didn't understand what were the director's feelings about Jesus, I didn't understand the creators' feelings about the New Testament. There was no message, it was just a show.