Jesus Christ Superstar closes May 31 at The Theatre at Solaire, Parañaque City. Tickets are available via https://premier.ticketworld.com.ph/shows/show.aspx?sh=JCS26.
The first time I saw anyone blow the roof off the theater with anything from Jesus Christ Superstar was in October 2014.
That was Bituin Escalante at Cultural Center of the Philippines, where her solo concert Everything in Bituin closed out season two of the Triple Threats series.
Escalante was a force of nature that evening: scorching in Cole Porter’s Find Me a Primitive Man, dynamite in Proud Mary. The unbeatable highlight, though, was her medley from Jesus Christ Superstar, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s landmark rock musical retelling of the Passion of Christ.
In the 2001 Manila staging directed by the late Bobby Garcia for Atlantis Productions, Escalante had played Mary Magdalene. Naturally, for the concert, she sang Mary’s signature number, the chart-topping I Don’t Know How to Love Him.
Midway through the song, however, Escalante shifted gears and launched into Heaven on Their Minds—the big solo of Judas Iscariot that opens the musical. It was a moment of seismic energy: “an earthshaking, sea-parting rendition,” I wrote for The Philippine Daily Inquirer, that made “musical theater worshipers in the house shoot up from their seats” and sent “everybody’s ears (into) a kind of auditory orgasm.”
What better word to capture the sheer thrill of Escalante’s performance than the Tagalog “halimaw”? A gender-bent production of the musical, starring Escalante as Judas, should have been in order. (Spoiler alert: It’s yet to happen.)
Ten years later—and over 6,000 km southeast of Manila—I met Escalante’s spiritual successor.
It was December 2024. At the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, Australia, the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre revival of Jesus Christ Superstar was a month into the first leg of its tri-city Australian tour. The production had reigned supreme during the 2016–2017 London theater season, winning Best Musical Revival at the Olivier Awards and Best Musical at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
I absolutely adored this production directed by Timothy Sheader, despite the stale, musty smell of the house. It was hot, fresh, electric, triumphantly deploying the grammar of street style and the lexicon of the pop-rock concert to render a musical from the 1970s unmistakably now. In hoodies, sweats, and sneakers, the ensemble looked like a hip-hop crew. They danced like a hip-hop crew (Drew McOnie’s choreography, with its cyclic use of staccatos and crescendoes, was oddly hypnotic). The set, dominated by a downward-sloping, cross-shaped platform—as if a ginormous crucifix had fallen from the sky—and the lights, repeatedly blazing and in-your-face, all seemed to gesture toward some divine concert in progress.
The Sanhedrin in Jesus Christ Superstar (Photo by Vitt Salvador)
And every now and then, the production turned toward the unabashedly queer: the character of Herod engulfed in a cascading cape of scintillating gold; the bare-chested Sanhedrin in flowy, grey cloaks, twirling their pastoral staffs (that doubled as microphones) like butch drag queens in a glamour act; Judas getting his hands coated in dripping, shimmering silver during his infamous betrayal of Christ; the lashing of Jesus enacted with—of all things—bursts of glitter! For an age-old story involving a literal coronation, the Passion was now even more baklà—and all the better for it.
At the center of it all was Michael Paynter, former contestant of The Voice Australia, who essayed the musical’s titular role.
Paynter’s boyish charm and carefree approach to the part aptly encapsulated the most vital question this Jesus Christ Superstar seemed intent on answering: What if the son of God were Justin Bieber? The whole pop-rock concert aesthetic made perfect sense with his interpretation.
Then, there was Paynter’s Gethsemane—Jesus’ big number in Act II. To this day, I’m still thinking about this specific performance. It’s the very definition of show-stopping: Paynter scaling the punishing notes in the song’s second half as if he’d been singing the score since birth, promptly earning a mid-show standing ovation from the hysterical audience (the evidence is afloat on YouTube). It’s one of the very few times I’ve seen a show stopped cold.
The only downside to this production was that Jesus’ dynamic with Judas—the musical’s key relationship—felt a bit askew. Javon King’s Judas, a riffing twink with a restless skip in his step, was inadvertently swallowed whole by Paynter’s Jesus (to King’s credit, nobody could have possibly survived the latter’s Gethsemane).
So, more than anything, it was this sense of imbalance that I was wary of while watching Jesus Christ Superstar at The Theatre at Solaire. (The same production from London and Australia has finally arrived in the Philippines, care of GMG Productions and is down to its final week of performances.)
I’m happy to report that, based on the May 16 evening performance I caught, this unevenness is nowhere to be found.
The production itself is in tip-top shape, with all the elements that made it terrific theater in Sydney intact. But in place of Paynter, we have a British Jesus in Luke Street. Even with, or perhaps because of, his silly little mustache (a compliment!), Street looks like someone barely out of his teens. My colleague Gibbs Cadiz compares him to American pop star Benson Boone, which I think is an accurate assessment. And his earnest, happy-to-be-here demeanor has a Trojan Horse-like effect: Street’s Gethsemane, a roof-rattling take, also feels like a genuine internal breakdown that happens within the world of the musical—not an out-of-show and out-of-body experience like Paynter’s. Street thoroughly embodies the momentary agony of this made-mortal son of God.
Opposite him, King is a worthy non-adversary—he’s even better now than when I saw him in Sydney: fiercer and sassier, galloping across that stage as if possessed by the spirit of Tina Turner. At one point, King even has it out with a saxophone feature. And his interactions with Gab Pangilinan’s Mary are all imbued with the frisson of a proper diva-off, which, if you really think about it, is nothing if not appropriate for a country that loves its telesérye and sampálan scenes onscreen. The two could give Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos at the end of Ishmael Bernal’s Ikaw Ay Akin a run for their money; if they went for each other’s wigs, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s the Passion as a spicy love triangle.
A shame, then, that the production hasn’t gained as much traction with Filipino theatergoers as other GMG shows that sold out their runs. In the era of jukebox musicals, this version of Jesus Christ Superstar is an exhilarating testament to the heights that original musical theater can attain. For those who’ve never seen the show, it’s an excellent introduction to the material. At its most breathtaking, it easily blows the roof off The Theatre at Solaire.
