Review: Pittsburgh CLO Slightly Reinvents GODSPELL at Benedum Center

If you're going to talk about musicals in Pittsburgh, let alone musicals FROM Pittsburgh, the story is ultimately going to revolve around Godspell. Created by bookwriter John-Michael Tebelak as his master's thesis at CMU circa the early 1970s, the musical quickly headed to Off-Broadway, with a brief Broadway run and a historic Toronto production that formed that roots of the seventies sketch comedy scene. Soon, there was a movie, and after that point, the little Jesus-clown musical from Pittsburgh was a worldwide sensation. Pippin, which shares composer Stephen Schwartz, had a similar Pittsburgh-to-Broadway trajectory, but a show as niche and nihilistic as Pippin will never be able to compete with the mix of loose hippie vibes, vaudeville throwbacks and old-time religion that give Godspell its heart.

Do you really need a synopsis for this show? Too bad, you're getting one anyway. John the Baptist (Luke Wygodny), a charismatic fellow, gathers a "tribe" of modern types with his fire and brimstone preaching, only to discover that one among them is Jesus Christ (Roderick Lawrence). Jesus's message is gentler and kinder than John's fundamentalist talk of damnation, and the tribe quickly switches its allegiance to him. This leads John to become Judas Iscariot instead and betray his protege turned rival turned rabbi. Jesus dies- maybe?- but his memory and his message live on.

Right off the bat, it's worth mentioning that there is probably no such thing as a "perfect Godspell." The book is all but nonexistent, a series of New Testament parables and proverbs strung into a series of songs, comedy sketches and moments. Along the way there are jokes, most of them old chestnuts when the show premiered in 1970; hell, a few of those jokes would have been old in Jesus's time. It's a show that inspires, maybe even requires, improvisation and tweaking, since the "red" version is full of deeply mothballed silent film and vaudeville references, and the "brick" version cuts several of the most memorable moments and adds in halfhearted stabs at twenty-first century political relevance. (If "red," "blue," "yellow" and "brick" mean nothing to you, you're probably not a Godspell nerd; these are the album cover colors of the four canonical versions of the show's score.) This production, directed by Gabriel Barre and choreographed by Jon Rua, takes a little "red" and a little "brick," adding some new jokes but keeping some sentimental favorites.

The best word to describe Barre's Godspell is "maximalist." From its original staging with just a handful of musical instruments, a sawhorse and a plank, Barre (aided by fifty years of show-staging tradition) has built outward, into an abstract and vaguely apocalyptic Pittsburgh slum setting. Set designer Britton Mauk even has a pile of scrap metal that suggests the shape of the PPG Building looming over the playing field; it's a children's playground but also a no man's land. In this atmosphere of mingled joy and dread, our two team captains hold sway. Luke Wygodny's John/Judas is a protean figure with titanic, stage-enveloping charisma: when we encounter him during preshow he's a jovial, playful and good-natured homeless man, but as soon as "Prepare Ye" ends, his talk of the wrath of God bursts out of him like a fountain. Throughout the entire show, his deep baritone and darker edge lend an emotional resonance to the threat and the cost of a radical pacifism like Jesus's; it's perhaps telling that many of the sillier bits of business often given to John/Judas are now given to tribe members instead. By contrast, Roderick Lawrence is a gentler, softer presence as Jesus. There's a dash of the cerebral to him, perpetually watching his own performance as if to say, "am I doing enough? Am I getting through to these people?" Though many productions shift suddenly from good times into maudlin sentiment in the second half of Act 2, Lawrence's Jesus is a grounding, soulful presence, acutely aware of mortality almost from the first scene.

Of course, a good Jesus and a good John/Judas mean nothing without a good tribe, and Pittsburgh CLO delivers. One of the first things I did upon arriving was check my program for the name of the orchestrator. Music director Keith Levenson is listed, but no orchestrator is provided, leading me to believe this Godspell, with its nineties folk-pop inspired sound, was a devised orchestration by the cast. Every single cast member, as far as I can tell, is an actor/musician, with some (most notably Angel Lin and Susana Cordón) performing almost full-time duty as multi-instrumentalists. It's almost folly to list standouts in a tight ensemble show like this, but Jacob Ben-Shmuel's mix of impressions, guitar playing and physical comedy throughout was a scene stealer, as was Emily Lynne Miller's hilarious audience interaction. Performing "Turn Back O Man" in a Hazmat suit amid jokes about COVID, she belts face while milking laughs. (Side note: Godspell has many traditional jokes that audiences have come to expect, some old and some newer; almost every performance of "Turn Back O Man" now contains both an imitation of Mae West and then an imitation of Idina Menzel.) Even Lawrence and Wygodny get extensive actor/musician moments; Wygodny plays the cello throughout, and Lawrence, in one of the show's most emotionally impactful moments, retreats to the band loft above the stage to play a solo rendition of "Beautiful City."

There will always be moments in any Godspell that feel perfunctory, there because they have to be there or audiences will riot if you don't include them. "It's for you, it's your father." "Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch." Karate chopping a shoe. But in any good Godspell- and this is way more than just a good Godspell- there will be enough moments of newness and revelation that the old becomes just a wink, not a nostalgia parade. Whether it's a musical reference to Leonard Cohen's standard "Hallelujah," or a quick reference to the January 6 committee hearings, this Godspell aims to surprise, to please and ultimately to uplift. It's new paint on an old wagon... but that's the point. Whether you're religious or not, community, love and radical pacifism are still relevant, still revolutionary and still controversial. This world has enough clowns; it needs a Superman now.