Women playing judas in godspell1/17/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() Producers Ron Brown, Jimmy Glover and Richard Haase are hoping to set up touring companies of the show and eventually move it to a commercial Off Broadway or even, perhaps, Broadway theatre. Co-producer/director Richard Haase was quoted as saying, "His suggestions were on the mark we needed the extra time to rehearse and incorporate the revisions." That's why the show rescheduled its opening from early January to Feb. Recently, composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz looked in on the show, reportedly liked what he saw, but recommended several changes. 21 in a neighboring store stopped just a few feet from the door of the theatre, leaving no damage. Indeed, the powers above must be looking out for the show, since a fire Nov. 22 at Harlem's Victoria Theatre - marking its very first all-black professional production. Tattoos were big in the '70s-little butterflies and stars-so why not face-paint zigzags and pinwheels and flowers? Anything to brighten up this miserable world: Which is what "Godspell" is saying, anyway.Godspell, the internationally-produced Stephen Schwartz biblical pop musical, opened its latest New York revival Feb. It occurred to me, about an hour into the film, that maybe young people will pick up on this. It was necessary in the stage version to exaggerate this makeup to make it visible, but the movie underplays it and it was gentle and nice. A girl gets a little yellow flower, a boy gets a tiny red star, and so on. The movie characters, like the stage characters, are given little watercolor designs on their faces by Jesus. With material of this sort, there must have been an impulse to go for TV-commercial trendiness, but Greene's style is unforced, and goes well with the movie's freshness and basic colors. For some blessed reason the director, David Greene, has resisted any temptation to make the movie visually fancy. These could conceivably be real people, and their freshness helps put the material over even when it seems pretty obvious. Remember " West Side Story," where all the allegedly teenage dancers looked like hardened theatrical professionals in greaser wigs? "Godspell's" cast is not only young but is allowed to look like a collection of individuals. What's nice about the casting-which gives us all new faces-is that the characters don't look like professional stage youths. The other eight characters, who seem to represent an on-the-spot gathering of disciples, are just themselves. Only two have names: Jesus, and a character who plays both John (who ushered Jesus into the Bible) and Judas (who hastened him out). This is a new use for New York, which looks unusually clean even its tacky skyscrapers edge toward grandeur when the vast long shots engulf them.Īgainst this wilderness of steel and concrete, the characters come on like kids at a junior high reunion, clothed in comic book colors and bright tattered rags. Except for the scenes at the beginning and end-which show the city as a temple of mammon and a rat nest-the movie is populated only by its cast we don't see anybody else, and the 10 kids dance, sing, and act out parables in such unlikely places as the World Trade Center and a tugboat. The stage version has been opened up into a movie by taking the whole of New York as a set. ![]()
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