The subject under discussion is the revival of Tim Rice's and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar. Though the now-celebrated pair concocted the property when they were in their twenties--initially, as a concept album--it may still be fair to characterize the result as juvenalia. Much worse, however, can be said about the sung-through show that follows Jesus during the brief span of time between his triumphant arrival in Jerusalem and his brutal crucifixion. This work is deeply sacrilegious. Indeed, were someone to suggest that it is even blasphemous, he or she would get no argument from this quarter.

The reasons for Jesus Christ Superstar's startling effrontery are multiple and begin with Rice's lyrics, which reduce the focal character, his followers, and their persecutors to illiterate rabble. Perhaps when Rice began to people the show in his mind, he thought to make Jesus et al. accessible to audiences by having them speak the language of the streets--not a totally misguided approach, but one that doesn't automatically call for everybody on hand to mouth banalities consistently. There would be a lot of fun in quoting Rice's leaden-footed words were his trivialization of the characters' modes of expression not so unrelentingly insulting. For instance, at the Last Supper (perhaps a Seder, during which leavened bread is served in this production), the disciples repeat the inane couplet: "Always hoped that I'd be an apostle/Knew that I would make it if I tried."

Who wouldn't be tempted to hoot at that imbecilic, communal boast? And yet, it's not really very amusing that Rice has failed to differentiate these 12 men, who have each made the decision to attend someone he accepts as the Messiah. How lazy of Rice to have them talk in advertising-copy