Jesus Christ Superstar
This review is from 2019, when Timothy Sheader’s Open Air Theatre production transferred to the Barbican. In summer 2026 it will be restaged at the London Palladium with pop star Sam Ryder in the title role.
First seen in 2016 at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Timothy Sheader’s bombastic revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera arrives at the Barbican with superstar ratings, even if it’s lost some of its, well, superstar turns.
It looks incredible: Tom Scutt’s set of rusty girders and a cross-shaped catwalk is moodily, then gloriously, lit by Lee Curran, especially a final, ascending beam of light behind the crucifixion. But the real touchstone is the show’s concert origins: characters swagger around the stage clutching microphones, or moon over acoustic guitars; later, electrical cords are the things they’re bound and hung by. But this staging also allows for rock-god excess, and it’s showered in gold and glitter. Herod is high-camp in a gold cape; Judas’s hands are dipped in silver for all to see, branded guilty by gilt.Drew McOnie’s edgy choreography turns the cast into a mob, whether united in juddering, convulsive devotion, or baying for blood. There’s a low-slung, swaggering looseness to the big chorus numbers that feels pleasingly modern, matched by costumes of artfully drapey grey marl: Jesus’s followers look like they’ve been dragged backwards through a branch of AllSaints.It also sounds incredible: musical director Ed Bussey drives relentlessly down the rock...