Can Jesus survive "Jesus Christ Superstar"? Sometimes it is "Love Story" in Jerusalem. Other times it is only "The Greening of the Box Office."… But is it a serious work of art? And how does it deal with the Passion of Christ?…

In a myriad of details gone wrong, the show bears little resemblance to the New Testament. Yet, what is most important, Jesus' mission got misplaced somewhere from drawing board to Star Chamber.

Is this the Jesus of a significant counter-culture? Not at all. For we see him reject the sick and distressed victims of society who come to him for help. We see a restless and tired "star" Jesus arrogantly send Judas away to do the work of betrayal. Fatigue and introspection could have legitimately been portrayed. But despair looms too centrally in Christ, conveying a sense of mission lost and purpose forgotten. (p. 1)

[There] is clearly the absence of a cross rooted in earth in "Jesus Christ Superstar." Such lack of specificity leads to those quasi-religious fantasies which obliterate detailed truth. I am not one of those purists who decry the show's bypassing of the resurrection. After watching Jesus hang on a Daliesque golden triangle (an avant-garde symbol of the cross?) for a glamorous simulation of the crucifixion, I offer thanks to the pantheon of gods that we were indeed spared a resurrection. But in its failure to come to terms with the sacrifice of a Christ-figure, or the Passion of Christ, "Jesus Christ Superstar" also fails to become a seriously motivated and constructed rock opera.

It is several things: a Rockette operetta, a Barnumian put-on, a religioso-cum-showbiz pastiche, and a musicalized "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Judas Song." The Jews seem to be guilty, once again, of causing Jesus' death…. We are thrust against energy without exuberance, torture without tragedy, in this collage-in-motion…. (pp. 1, 7)

The sharp intrusion of sex—again and again and again—into the show can only focus attention on Jesus' own sexuality. Is he Gay? Bisexual? Straight? Asexual?…

The sexuality of Jesus will undoubtedly comprise the Exhibit A controversy about the show. He and Mary Magdalene fondle and kiss each other; I felt an implicit acceptance of the fact that they have enjoyed intercourse. The exposure of this side of Jesus' humanity drew cheers from the audience, perhaps in reaction against the celibate Jesus of churchianity who has been used traditionally as a major argument against sex outside of (and before) wedlock as well as against homosexuality.

Jesus as a human being (as well as the Son of God) with sexual feelings may be far overdue in our puritanical, sexually hypocritical society. Yet I feel that his sexuality was not handled sensitively or with taste in this gaudily inhuman parody….

The show gives us a confused, tired but plucky Jesus who is going to the cross even if it kills him. Mary Magdalene is a cool, mod and sincere chick who digs Jesus but senses that he is very different from other men whom she has known. She sings a gentle ditty about the love for him that she feels. However, it is clearly not sufficiently deep a love to bind her to him through his torture and death….

Judas' feelings about Jesus provide the real basis for the utterly fictional story line that links the musical numbers. Judas feels that he is trapped in a terrible role, one scripted by God and directed by Jesus…. Judas' acceptance of a predestination to damnation smacks unappetizingly of Calvinism with bitters. So Judas plays a role instead of being himself.

It is an absurd irony that a simplistic success … has come out of the ambiguity and violent paradox of Jesus' Passion, presented here with all dimension flattened. Even the controversy of Jesus, intellectually ignored in this show, is made marketable in a plastic-ware production. It doesn't have a soul. (p. 7)