|
|
|
|
New York Post Review
Surprise In
By JERRY TALLMER
Who would have thought it? “Godspell,” announced
as “A Musical Based
Upon the Gospel According to
Saint Matthew.” And it turns out to be good.
A thing of joy.
Youth joy.
Which I’d believed I’d had enough of,
In the theater.
But last night at the
Ten young performers — mostly out of Carnegie Tech, it appears—and a young instigator-director, John-Michael Tebelak, 22. With music and “new- lyrics,” whatever that means, by Stephen Schwartz. And what they have done is, welt, make a musical—and a circus, a clown show, a magic show-, a game show—out of the Gospel According to Saint Matthew.
Its Jesus has a clown’s eyes and red bulb nose and wears red suspenders over a Superman shirt. He delivers some of his parables while the ragamuffin disciples adorn themselves with face paint, plucks others from the heart of a fortune cookie. Baptism is by yellow kitchen sponge. The lilies of the field spring forth as instant paper flowers, with instant canes popping from sleeves for the rickv-tickv Ted Lewis soft shoe dance through which Jesus and John the Baptist deliver the message of the beam and the mote.
Sheep and Goats
Moments: Jesus dividing the sheep from the goats, everybody baa-ing and four- legging it around him with one little goat trying to sneak past into heaven. Jesus telling how if “a man comes up and slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer your left,” to which John the Baptist. or maybe Judas (played by the same actor,) can only groan a disgusted: “Oh, Jesus.” The parable of The Rich Man storing away his “corn and popcorn and Tuna Surprise and hi & M’s.”
At intermission, following the smashing first-act finale, I asked myself: Now
how are they going to handle the sad pacts? And
Indeed
the eve- fling breaks apart in the middle and never quite recovers until—after a
some what embarrassing crucifix ion against a wire fence— there is another
smashing finale of the body borne toward Resurrection. For what it’s worth, I
would my self eliminate that intermission and shorten things by dropping out a
pretentious “Tower of Babel” opener of Important quotes From
Da Vinci, Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Aquinas,
Socrates, Sartre, Martin Luther, Gibbon,
Neitzche.
All this may, in print, sound kind of childish, and the show is indeed very much on the child side. But it’s not childishness. It’s childlike ness. Child-ness. Of the best part of children: energy, gaiety, honest spirit. And irreverence. Which in this case is quite the opposite of blasphemy, for “Godspell” is a work that believes in God— and people—and possibility.
A slim young man named Stephen Nathan gives us a slim and loving—and terribly young—Jesus. David Haskell is an excellent, more mature John-Judas. Herb Simon is a fine agitated story teller for a mimed Prodigal Son. The others I ticked off as “the ‘goopy’ one,” The ‘funny’ one,” etc.
Which brings us to Sonia Manzano, who is simply as cute as a silver dollar. She plays a racy lady, At their best, it is impossible to (like any of them, and their “Godspell” is going to be a big, big hit.
Oh yes: “Godspell” comes to Off-Broadway from earlier production at La Mama.
(Click the picture below to return to the Reviews section.)
bravenet.com