Okay, not his literal grave. But if poor Mr. Neeley had seen this farce of a production, I'm pretty sure he would have dropped dead from the shock of seeing the atrocity that was passed off to the audience as a professional performance of JCS. Yes, it was that bad.
The problems started early on, with Judas' "Too Much Heaven...", and got progressively worse from there. He started the song 4 words into the lyrics, because his voice was completely inaudible at the onset. And this was just the beginning of the issues in the sound department. The rest of the show continued this way-- with voices being muffled, screeching feedback at multiple times during the show, uneven sound levels (leaving one word inaudible, while the next was ear-piercingly loud), and a host of other sound issues. It was so bad at one point that during an exchange between Pilot and Jesus, it seems Jesus'
microphone went completely out (leaving Jesus unable to reply), as the cast fumbled then
tried to catch up to the music to disguise this sophomoric lapse of technical abilities from the
sound crew. To add insult to injury, the usher informed me that they were well aware of
sound problems from the previous evening's show as well. Then hopefully added that, "Maybe it'll get better for the second act?".
Oh, optimistic little usher boy, it was not to be so.
It'd be too exhaustive to both reader and author to describe in detail, the remainder of the
flaws and flubs of this show. So here's a quick overview of the rest of the "lowlights": Simon
the Zealot lacking all zeal, then falling down the middle of the set piece, choreography that
would make the stage mother's on Toddlers & Tiaras cringe, Judas was incapable of doing
any amount of 'acting' outside of grabbing his pant crotch a few times (to express his
displeasure?), costuming and stage designs that look like they were borrowed from the local
grade-school, and a hyper-venilating Jesus that seemed to go into panic attacks so often,
that I wanted to give him a paper bag to breathe into.
Pontius Pilot (Ben Vereen) was good, when you could hear him. And a granny sitting in front
of me smacked an unsupervised kid, that was repeatedly using his cellphone during the performance. Those were the most entertaining points of the evening.