J.C

I had a little bit of luck yesterday evening, in that I managed to obtain two free tickets to see Jesus Christ Superstar at Nottingham's Arena, through an email that I had received.

We hadn't been to the theatre in a while, so it was great to have something to look forward to.

I met Gail in town, and after we had had something to eat, we headed down towards the Arena. I had been a bit earlier and picked up the tickets, as the box office was only open until 6pm.

As you can imagine it was a sell out, although besides the giveaway, a couple of these deal sites had been offering tickets at half price, so I wonder out of the hundreds that were there, how many of them had actually paid full price.

We settled into our seats and had a look at the stage. It was different in that it was just stairs, with platforms each side for the musicians. There was also a big screen at the back which showed the JCS logo, of a multicoloured star, which if I remember right, was on the original album that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber made in the early 1970s.

The lights dimmed and suddenly the screen came alive with fake TV news reports of war, demonstrations and the like. So I thought, this is going to be a modern retelling, rather than in the style of the 1973 film and the TV series which starred Robert Powell. Then a load of dancers came on dressed like demonstrators and some riot police.  The police left and the demonstrators all had these pop up tents and then Jesus came on as a sort of charismatic pop idol, rather than the son of God.

Former Spice Girl Melanie C plays Mary, and doesn't do a bad version of "I Don't Know How to Love Him'. Possibly in a slightly harsher tone than say someone like Sarah Brightman would do.

There was a bit of strange casting in radio DJ Chris Moyles as Herod, who did it as a sort of game show host, complete with flapper girls. There were some other odd touches such as sexy angels. If I didn't know better, I might have thought it had been created and directed by Ken Russell.

On the whole it was an enjoyable night, and certainly well staged and chorographed. I guess the problem I had was that I was expecting to see more well known West End singers in the main leads.