Alice Cooper Superstar ? Alice as King Herod in the new version of Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert that was broadcasted in the USA on NBC last night ! 1300 people in the live audience, in an armory in Brooklyn, and 9.4 milion views on live TV !
the vaudeville song with Alice now reminds best of Last Man on Earth from his sequel album, Welcome 2 My Nightmare !
might be the rockiest and most interesting version yet ! of Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice's best musical -actually a still provocative rock opera- from 1970 ! Great production design, directing, cast and guitars...three :) !
John Legend is Jesus !! So now he's Legend :)
And Brit actor Ben Daniels is a mean Pontius Pilate !
The whole thing is produced by Marc Platt (La La Land), which explains better the choice of John Legend !
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Variety tho didn't enjoy JCS and the duration of 2 h20 (40 minutes of commercials, saw the thing without at 1h40, credits included). With one exception, of the Coop's performance, which at 5 minutes could be more of a cameo, though he's billed the third -and last- on the top billing -after Jesus and Mary Magdalene (Sara Bareilles)!
The musical was intensely earnest, often endearingly so. The entire cast, a multi-cultural tribe who looked as though they just left a loft party at 3 a.m. hungry for more adventure, was as energetically sincere as they could be almost all of the time. The exception was Alice Cooper, who stole the show when he emerged in an orange suit. But that adjective doesn’t begin to describe what he was wearing. Cooper’s threads looked like there were made out of flames — that’s how vivid and pleasingly eye-popping his tailored suit was — and yet the singer easily outshone his clothes. His rendition of “King Herod’s Song” was a star turn of the highest order, and a delightful amount of fun. If you can’t enjoy a dapper, devilish rock-god Herod surrounded by dancing ladies clad in outfits a Vegas showgirl would kill for, then perhaps live musicals on television are just not for you. (Your loss.)
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Vulture judged it a grand success ! while they didn't like the Coop so much they judged it like this:
NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Set a New Standard for Live Musicals (title)
Minute for minute, NBC’s Easter spectacle was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in the 20-plus years I’ve been writing about TV. (...) This Superstar was the closest that live television has come to creating a hybrid new form, combining elements of epic cinema, the stage musical, and the concert film. It’s a minor miracle.
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New York Times loved the show and the Coop:
"...moments of startling clarity, including: Alice Cooper’s magnificently scenery-chewing performance of “King Herod’s Song”
