Cynthia Erivo, Adam Lambert in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at Bowl Review

Loving “Jesus Christ Superstar” is one thing, but loving the myriad staged productions of “Jesus Christ Superstar” is another. The Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice masterpiece existed arguably in its most perfect form in the original 1970 concept album, and although there hasn’t been a lack of paying customers for thousands of legit productions in the 55 years since, mounting a really outstanding one has been like, well, putting a camel through the eye of a needle, to quote somebody famous. The pitfalls are endless — too proudly irreverent, too stodgy, too stagy, not staged enough — but one of the biggest ones is treating it like a traditional musical and not the “rock opera” it was conceived as. Another one is: Yes, it’s fun that Judas is really kind of the star of the show, but isn’t there something wrong when Jesus, supposedly the most charismatic figure of all time, by reputation, usually ends up seeming like a sour second banana?

The “Jesus Christ Superstar” presented as a three-night event at the Hollywood Bowl did not have these problems, and you can say that again. So we will: The “Jesus Christ Superstar” presented as a three-night event at the Hollywood Bowl really did not have these problems. Like its namesake, it was a big old smash. The casting of that namesake is probably the biggest single factor among a lot of successful ones. If you were only to have heard first that Adam Lambert was cast as the nominal protagonist/antagonist, you’d think: Well, there they go again, but what a romp it will be, at least, as Judas Iscariot Superstar overpowers whatever poor lamb they get to be his foil. But in Cynthia Erivo, the great betrayer finally met his brilliantly cast match, and Lloyd Webber and Rice’s buddy tragedy landed itself the divine frenemies of your dreams.

Of course, the line on Jesus, theologically, is that he was (or is) both man and God, and Rice’s lyrics in the more self-doubting numbers, like “Gethsemane,” go a long way there, but it’s ultimately hard not to play his humanity up so much that he just becomes banal. But what better stroke of casting savvy than to cast someone who is only half-man than someone who is… not a man? Putting a woman in the part to begin with already establishes a sense of otherness that breaks away from the tendency to play Christ as a shaggy-haired, pissy hippie. But Erivo really does come in with a look and persona that’s a fascinating combination of warm and otherworldly — bald, intimidatingly taloned and ready to break out into a melting smile when she’s not brooding over moneylenders or impending martyrdom. David Bowie once had a song that referred to faith in God as “Loving the Alien” — and as this Jesus Christ, Erivo really is a lovable soul whose DNA seems only partly of this earth.

Purely vocally, too, it’s hard to conceive of a better-sung Jesus than the one Erivo gave us over the weekend. In some practical ways, the show remains weighted toward Judas, as Christ gets a big standout number near the top of the second act, but then goes on to pretty much give Kings Herod and Pilate and the audience the strong, silent treatment after that. (It’s also one of the ballsier conceits of the show that Jesus doesn’t get a resurrection scene, but Judas does.) But if you’ve truly nailed “Gethsemane,” you’ve won the show, even if the last stretch after that calls for silent acting skills more than anything. Standing in place before finally dropping to her knees, without the slightest of scenic distractions, Erivo made the show’s signature epic ballad her own for six minutes. Fan message boards were aflutter about whether she would want to try the song’s memorable “Whyyyyy” howl (a male-falsetto money note likely improvised by Ian Gillian on the original double-LP, and imitated by everyone who’s capable of it since). Of course she didn’t, any more than she replicated the exact war cry in “Wicked’s” “Defying Gravity.” She stayed true to the core melody with just enough belted embellishment to make the gospels’ garden suddenly seem like a chilly place, goose pimples included. After that number, the house lights came up for a bit to afford Erivo a very extended standing ovation, while she didn’t break haunted, glassy-eyed character. Bless those moments in the theater where you wait for a showpiece number and, by God (literally, in this case), you get it.

Was this theater, though, or a concert presentation? The Hollywood Bowl’s annual presentations of a major stage musical always skirt that line a little. (The LA Phil has put them on every year up until the pandemic, then picked it back up in 2023 for a one-off of “Kinky Boots,” and now has carried on the tradition again, hopefully for good.) What generally happens is that the part of the audience that isn’t longtime season ticketholders shows up expecting some fairly unstaged vocal performances and then is happily surprised at just how produced the production really is. But “Jesus Christ Superstar” in particular benefits from any is-it-or-isn’t-it confusion, having typically been staged with modern dress or without any Middle Eastern scenic design anyway, and having begun as a couple of slabs of vinyl. The Bowl production split the difference in some interesting ways. No one broke the fourth wall to acknowledge that this was anything other than a deeply experience — except for Josh Gad’s Herod, with some improvised joking in his one number. But while nearly the entire cast wore now-customary head mics, Erivo and Lambert both used corded, handheld microphones, to subliminally anchor this just a bit on the concert side of things… or so director/choreographer Sergio Trujillo has suggested in interviews. It doesn’t hurt that it makes the two principals look and feel just a little more like the rock stars they more or less are.

Lambert’s Judas is unmistakably a rock god, all the cooler for being, as he predicts, damned for all time. Probably no one has wailed this role with quite the gusto that Lambert wails it, though many have tried. In tone he’s closer to Ian Gillian’s Jesus on the original ’70 album than Murray Head’s lower, grittier O.G. Judas. The actor-singer really does sound like he should be fronting Deep Purple + Adam Lambert, if not that other band he occasionally takes part in. There is nothing subtle about his glowering and gustiness in the role — and also nothing that is anything less than thrilling for even a moment of the performance. That goes for the bravura opening number, “Heaven on Their Minds” (which Lambert and Lloyd Webber just released as a studio single), a bold we join this show already in progress kickoff that feels like the start of an Act 2 more than an Act 1 intro, which allows a Lambert to raise the curtain like he’s starting a Ferrari in fifth gear. It carries on through his resurrection song, “Superstar,” which he plays like he’s an angry Kurt Cobain trapped in a Las Vegas afterworld. Lambert gets the last word in the show… well, the last sung word, as Jesus’ crucifixion scene is pretty much the one time the rock opera gives way to a little speaking, following by the spooky instrumental denouement. The actor knows it’s “Superstar” you’ll go home humming in your head, and makes sure he’s planted that earworm so thoroughly it won’t pop out for a year.

“Jesus Christ Superstar” is not a two-hander, difficult as it is not to discuss it like that with these leads. Phillippa Soo does wonderful work with her two sweet ballads (“Everything’s Alright,” “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”) as Mary Magdalene, whom this show made sure future generations would remember as a reformed prostitute, even if that notion is extrabiblical. “JCS” was always controversial among evangelicals for, among other things, portraying a romantic longing for Jesus and leaving open the question of whether it was reciprocated. Any audience that is deeply offended by that, or by the idea of having Christ now portrayed by a queer woman, is probably not going to show up at this production and be further bothered by direction that has Erivo and Soo caught up in a tender embrace that looks like it might be more than just Savior and save-ee. (Still, in the great tradition of “Superstar,” there is just a lot of wiggle room all around that allows the faithful and completely faithless to offer their own embrace.)

Gad made news by having to back out of the opening night performance after a positive COVID test, even though he said on his socials Friday that he was back to negative. Friday night, his fill-in, John Stamos, who had flown over from Spain, took the role anyway for a single night. Sunday, when we caught the show, Gad was in his full ad-libbing glory as Herod, probably counting as the main attraction for at least some segment of the audience that reveres “Book of Mormon” even more than New Testament adaptations. If there is any part of the show that feels dated (and, shockingly, not much does, despite its mid-counterculture vintage), it’s probably the apostles’ two amusing but patronizing numbers as lazy no-accounts (“What’s the Buzz”), followed by Herod’s turn. But there’s a reason why other theatrical writers and producers have used “King Herod’s Song” as a template for slapstick numbers like “Hamilton’s” King George song. Theology and damnation and the light of the world barely stand a chance against a good four-minute visit to camp.

As for that aforementioned other longstanding obstacle to worthy stage productions — the not rocking hard enough part — this problem also was handily laid to rest. Musical director and conductor Stephen Oremus (who did estimable work on both the Broadway and film iterations of “Wicked”) has managed to navigate the tricky balance between the band that was visible on stage throughout and the orchestra that mostly stayed out of sight behind an LED screen/curtain after the overture. Whatever reasons there may have been for rendering the strings and horns invisible, it did have the effect of visually focusing the show more on its rock roots. And this is a musical that has a lot more rock ‘n’ roll in it than you may remember — a show where even a character as minor and intrinsically unfunky as Caiaphas (the profound basso profundo Zachary James) is doing his thing to a slamming backbeat, and not in a corny way. Lloyd Webber wrote more memorable electric guitar riffs for this one show — and pretty much just for this one show — than most licensed rock stars get to in a career, and these did not get short shrift at the Hollywood Bowl.

It’s a small quibble, but if there was anything in the show that didn’t work, or at least didn’t add much value, it was that giant LED screen, which often had nothing more imaginative displayed than the word “JESUS” in big, block letters, as if we might get confused that we were watching “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” without the frequent reminder. In effect, the screen’s real purpose was to obscure the orchestra — which may sound like a bad thing, but was wise in not putting more bodies in the audience’s line of sight than necessary for something that still has to work dramatically. If no one got too ambitious about what to put on it, at least until Erivo spread her arms in front of a digital cross, that’s not such a bad thing.

Trujillo’s choreography was first-rate, taking the show as far away from a Pageant of the Masters feel as possible without overstuffing the show with dance. The use of the semicircular ramp separating the “pool” seats from the rest of the crowd was optimized in a few key moments, undoubtedly allowing for some especially memorable moments for the Glamberts on hand who paid a premium.

The big question: Is this all there is? There didn’t seem to be any pro filming going on, so it would seem like a you had to be there experience… but, speaking of “What’s the buzz,” it would be hard to think of a purely local L.A. experience in recent years that more of a national audience would have liked to see and couldn’t. (For those who did have the means to fly in, resale tickets were routinely selling in the four-figure range by the weekend.) Does the presence of a lot of high-profile producers in the credits augur for something beyond a three-night shelf life, even if there’s no history of that with previous similar Bowl productions? If Lambert and Erivo could both be signed up for Broadway, this show would surely run for as many months, years or millennia as they were willing to commit to it. Or — knowing schedules, and going back to the question of whether this still counts as a concert presentation — would it make sense to turn this into a short arena tour? That doesn’t feel remotely implausible, given the level of talent (and of the popular appreciation for that talent) at play here.

Then again, it’s just as likely everyone involved did it for the love of God, or of Lloyd Webber, whichever comes first. Just don’t say we’re damned for all time to never see these leads together again.