50th anniversary tour of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' making stop at Wharton Center
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In the Andrew Lloyd Weber/Tim Rice musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Mary Magdalene asks, “Could we start again, please?”
With the second national tour of the iconic rock opera coming through Wharton Center June 13-18, the answer is yes.
The 50th anniversary tour, reimagined with new choreography, costumes and set pieces, took London by storm and now is traveling across the U.S. Directed by Timothy Sheader, it pays tribute to the 1971 concept album, a musical that follows the last weeks of Jesus Christ as seen through the eyes of Judas.
It will be a bit of a homecoming for Ethan Hardy Benson, one of the ensemble members who plays First Priest, Peter Accuser and understudies for Jesus, Pilate, Anais and Peter. Benson is a Memphis native, but he earned his BFA in acting from the University of Michigan, graduating last year after a tumultuous college career interrupted by a pandemic.
He joined the second national tour of “Jesus Christ Superstar” when it launched last fall after spending 15 weeks playing the role of SpongeBob in “SPONGEBOB: The Musical” and two other roles in Colorado. JCS is a musical he very much enjoys because this interpretation is so ensemble based.
“The show kind of feels like an amoeba,” Benson said. “We ebb and flow together. We grow and get smaller together. Every night feels different just depending on how everyone is feeling that night and if we have any covers or swings going on. It absolutely never gets boring or tiring or anything like that, because it’s always changing and evolving.”
As a tenor, he revels in the range he gets to sing with the different characters. While they are all tenors, they go from the low range to what he describes as Jesus’ crazy high notes. It’s also a very different experience from having played a cartoon character in a fairly new musical. “Jesus Christ Superstar” is iconic and audiences all come with set expectations.
“It’s been around over 50 years and there are people who have seen it over 50 times,” Benson said. “They’ll come to the show and say they’ve seen it over 50 times and they’re genuinely not lying. They have actually seen the production over 50 times. With that comes a lot of responsibility about the people before you. We take that on and we use certain influences from different productions and things that are iconic in the JCS you know — discography and certain moments that people expect.”
He credits Sheader and choreographer Drew McOnie for being true to the heart of the musical while putting their own spin on the classic, introducing the musical to new generation of theater-goers with different expectations for what they see on stage.
He hopes that even the diehard fans will be excited about what has been done with this production, a production he said will be unlike any other “Jesus Christ Superstar” they’ve seen unless they’ve seen this tour or the West End production.
“We are based on the brown album as we call it, the original album,” Benson said. “The show starts and it keeps turning and spinning just like the record did with very little room for applause. We’re really going for the album, letting it spin how you would have initially heard it. That’s what we go for as far as the sound in the production. A lot of time there’s just instrumentals and Drew has expertly found a way to put that music into movement and help move the story forward using our bodies.”
The weeklong run won’t be Benson’s first time at Wharton. When he was a sophomore at the University of Michigan, one of his professors was conducting “Come From Away” when it came through East Lansing. A group of them came here to watch the show and support her.
This leg of the “Jesus Christ Superstar” tour ends in June and he said everyone is eager to get in their last few performances in their roles, so he suspects he won’t be going on much in his understudy roles.
He did, though, get a chance to perform the role of Jesus when he was in Detroit and was able to invite many of his college friends and professors to come out and see him. He ended up with about 20 of his people in the audience, which was one of the more thrilling moments of the tour for him.
While the story is millennia old and the musical has been staged for more than a half a century, Benson said it continues to be relevant with today’s society bringing out new meanings. In it, Judas watches as his friend becomes what today would be a worldwide global phenomenon, a celebrity whose every move is analyzed.
“We dig down into the fact that this guy could be anyone,” Benson. “It could be any one of us and what happens when someone gets placed on that pedestal and maybe things get out of hand and then once that fire starts, it’s kind of like a forest fire. It’s very hard to control and contain. Like the mob mentality once it gets going. That’s something that this show illustrates.”
The musical, Benson said, is just as iconic as ever and people will recognize the big numbers such as “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and “What’s the Buzz.”
“You go for the story, but you’re also going there for the music and the set design is incredible,” Benson said. “The lighting is incredible. It’s a full-out performance and it’s only 90 minutes straight through. It never drags, you’re always moving forward. Before you know it, you’re at the end of the show and you’re like, ‘wow, that was truly an experience.’”
If you go
"Jesus Christ Superstar"
When: June 13-18
Where: Wharton Center for Performing Arts, Michigan State University
Tickets: whartoncenter.com or 1-800-WHARTON
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: 'Jesus Christ Superstar' at Wharton Center June 13-18
