The Regent's Park Open Air Theatre Production of Jesus Christ Superstar: Review

It wouldn’t be an odd question to ask: what is The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre Production of Jesus Christ Superstar doing indoors?

Timothy Sheader’s bold new staging first opened in 2016, winning a host of awards, including an Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival. But how does this translate to a theatre tour?

Put simply: it blows the doors off!

It’s 50 years since Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber originally wrote the show as a concept album and Sheader captures this essence as a stadium gig, giving us a concert-style presentation that blasts with rock-star excess from start to finish.

Tom Scutt’s dramatic, multi-layered set fills every inch of the Lowry’s huge Lyric stage to create an atmosphere that is both exhilarating and intimate.

The band are visible on raised platforms while the cast swagger below with hand-held mics and plugged guitars. The staging is never still as the tightly choreographed ensemble switch from energetic dancers to backing singers with mic stands.

Now half-way through a year-long UK tour, the show is slick and the performances confident. The musical is fully sung, like a rock opera. It requires strong voices and showcases the vocal range of its lead actors, Ian McIntosh as a beefed-up, street-savvy Jesus in drop-crotch pants and hoodie, and Shem Omari James as his tormented betrayer, Judas. Both are terrific.

The stadium effect does lose some of the emotion in places, particularly in Mary’s ballad, ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’. Hannah Richardson sings beautifully and her clear diction brings out every line of the famous song, but the sound levels of the music keeps everything moving at a high stakes, thrilling pace.

But while our finer emotions may get swept along on the ride, there is no diluting the despair of Judas’ suicide, or the horror of a bloodied and graphic depiction of Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion.

At the end the audience was silent but then rose to its feet in spontaneous applause. It’s a loud, roller-coaster, rock-god of a show that will leave you in awe.