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TIME Magazine
May 24, 1971
This week in
Manhattan’s
off-Broadway Cherry Lane Theater,
religion takes another step into musical theater with a rambunctious musical
called Godspell, which suggests what the best of medieval morality plays must
have been like. Conceived and directed by Carnegie Tech Drama Student
John-Michael Tebelak, written and scored by Carnegie Tech Alumnus Stephen
Schwartz, a Jew, and performed mostly by Carnegie Tech drama students, Godspell
is nothing less than a musical version of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Tebelak and
company concentrate mostly on Jesus’ teachings rather than his Passion, telling
the familiar parables with a barrage of comic and burlesque styles. But the
players also evoke the poignancy of Jesus’ sacrifice. At a benefit performance
last week, when Jesus (played by Stephen Nathan) said farewell to his Apostles,
many in the audience were weeping. One Roman Catholic, leaving the theater, said
that the show was “the best Mass I’ve been to in years.” That, of course, brings
theater back where it started, in the temple.
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