So JCS - my review: NIA, Birmingham 5 Oct 2012. I had quite a good view all told. I was up one of the sides towards the stage. The way they planned the staging was great because they had a big screen behind the set which was a changing backdrop which started off as live news reports of all the riots and troubles going on in the world and then focusing in more on the camp-outs that have been happening across Europe like in Greece, Italy, Spain and the like. It was showing all the police brutality happening against peaceful protestors. The set itself was just one giant staircase which worked pretty well - and it began with tent-city in Rome. Jesus was there preaching his message and his disciples were just all the homeless, junkies and various drop-outs from society. Of course Mary Magdalene (Mel C) was a prostitute (what else)? So it was set in modern times but in a strange parallel Universe where there was this Big Brother type organisation overlooking it all and they see Jesus as a rabble rouser and dangerous because he's exposing their strict 'haves and have nots' society. So that was a clever parallel to what's going on right now and for "What's the buzz?" they had all the social media stuff popping up on the big screen with Twitter and Facebook etc which seemed spookily in sync with the material. All the songs were untouched. They have different musical arrangements but all the songs/lyrics were as Webber/Rice had dictated. Tim Minchen as Judas was fantastic! Truly amazing and also fab was Alex Hansen who played a perfect Pilate. He was very thrilling specially during the 'lashes' scene. Chris Moyles as Herod was funny (OTT chat-show host in this) so I tried to give him a chance as I'm not normally a fan. Ben Forster was totally mesmerising as Jesus. He reminded me a lot of the actor Liev Schrieber looks wise. I am convinced he was the best choice out of the various guys who were on the auditions show. Gethsemane was breathtaking - so fantastically acted and he was crying buckets of tears by the end of it. The audience response to that was brill too because everyone was cheering and shouting in appreciation as he stood there totally drained. As it is with musicals when some songs segue into others it means that even when someone does a good performance there is not always the opportunity to clap at that point. For example when Judas kills himself (awful special effect of him really hanging!) after that no-one can actually clap a death even though he did a great build up to it. So what was great was that at the end of the play the final cheer for him was the biggest because we'd not had a chance to clap him at any point (no-one would cheer on the traitor - right)? Mel C did get a warm response to her solo which was done far better than when she did it on TV. The songs are so loud and resounding in a theatre (nay Arena!) aren't they and she was note perfect and I got the chills - so well done. All in all thought it was thoroughly good and the audience around seemed to be saying positive things about it. Oh and Jeff Anderson (one of the runners-up in the TV show) was in the ensemble and he is the understudy for Jesus which was nice.
We saw it yesterday at Sheffield Arena. My son has a corporate box and got us tickets for £55 each.so we hoped we would have a good view. Unfortunately because of the angle and height we were watching from, it wasn't easy to see everything. Also there was a curtain from the top of the arena hanging halfway down (not sure what it's purpose was) and that blocked quite a lot of the big screen. It was packed solid, in fact the traffic was so bad outside that they slightly delayed the start.
I did enjoy the performance and thought everyone sang brilliantly especially Mel C who I wasn't the biggest fan of previously. However, it's a massive amount of money to pay to watch a show that you can't really see all of.
We saw it yesterday at Sheffield Arena. My son has a corporate box and got us tickets for £55 each.so we hoped we would have a good view. Unfortunately because of the angle and height we were watching from, it wasn't easy to see everything. Also there was a curtain from the top of the arena hanging halfway down (not sure what it's purpose was) and that blocked quite a lot of the big screen. It was packed solid, in fact the traffic was so bad outside that they slightly delayed the start.
I did enjoy the performance and thought everyone sang brilliantly especially Mel C who I wasn't the biggest fan of previously. However, it's a massive amount of money to pay to watch a show that you can't really see all of.
I thought it was a curtain first of all (I went to the Wembley Arena show), but it's actually a speaker. It blocked part of the screen from where I was sitting but it wasn't that bad. If I had been sitting about 10 seats to the left though it would've been worse and probably missed Judas' suicide.
I bought this at Morrisons for £7 and must say I am most impressed so far. I have watched up until Judas says that Jesus will be in Gethsemane (hubby came home from golf at that point!).
I cannot get into the main thread for JCS for some reason so have added my comment here.
we went last night, thoroughly enjoyed it. Loved Chris's cameo, thought the leads all sang and acted well, Tim was excellent. the only thing we felt it lacked was a bit of atmosphere, due to size of the venue(NIA), Certainly didn't notice any sound problems, whole crowd loved it.
never knew Ben had that six pack tucked away:o
Is there going to be a dvd/cd
The DVD is out now and I am enjoying it very much.
Comments
I did enjoy the performance and thought everyone sang brilliantly especially Mel C who I wasn't the biggest fan of previously. However, it's a massive amount of money to pay to watch a show that you can't really see all of.
I thought it was a curtain first of all (I went to the Wembley Arena show), but it's actually a speaker. It blocked part of the screen from where I was sitting but it wasn't that bad. If I had been sitting about 10 seats to the left though it would've been worse and probably missed Judas' suicide.
I cannot get into the main thread for JCS for some reason so have added my comment here.
The DVD is out now and I am enjoying it very much.