Review: Top show has stood the test of time

It’s more than 40 years since Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber created the show and there is no question that it has stood the test of time.

Its latest incarnation at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal was an entertaining and successful revival with some outstanding contributions.

A feature is the concise manner in which Rice and Lloyd Webber pack everything in to less than two hours without losing anything of importance.

It’s all here – the arrival in Jerusalem, the concern of the priests over Christ’s rise in popular status, the healing, clearing the moneylenders out of the Temple, Gethsemane and the last supper, Pilate’s plea and the terrible climax.

Here Glenn Carter really excels. The horrors of the cross are not easy watching and we share the agony and involuntary wince at every nail and the crown of thorns.

Carter’s talent is matched by Tim Rogers as Judas Iscariot. Unhappy with the direction his beloved friend is taking, Judas’s concern receives no support from either the disciples or Christ himself.

Rogers produces a first-rate performance, all anger, emotion and in superb vocal form, particularly in the title song.

Rachel Adedeji (Mary Magdalene) provides a lovely version of I Don’t Know How to Love Him and a word, too, for Johnathan Tweedie’s Pilate in a show which is well worth a visit.

The show is at the Theatre Royal until Saturday, July 4.

Photo of Glenn Carter by Pamela Raith