Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
The greatest story
On page 13 of this issue, our Christian columnist, Vince Winder, makes the case for the birth of Jesus Christ as being the most important event in human history. Even from fellow Christians, he might get a few arguments on that point. Agreed, for centuries we have used a calendar which sees that event as pivotal. Nevertheless, the calendar isn’t everything, and such events as the invention of the printing press or the wheel might be reasonably viewed as more fundamental to human progress.
And even in the life of Jesus, I would think that most theologians would see his birth in Bethlehem as only the third-most important event. After all, his birth wouldn’t be significant in the least, would it, if not for his crucifixion and resurrection? When I was a boy growing up in the United Church, certainly Christmas was more eagerly awaited, but that was largely because of all the non-religious traditions that surrounded it, and that continues true today. But in terms of what Christianity was all about, Good Friday and Easter Sunday were what really counted. Handel’s Messiah, for some reason, is most often sung at Christmas (including here in Uxbridge every second year), but the most popular passage in the oratorio, the one for which the audience stands, is the Hallelujah Chorus, which has nothing whatever to do with Jesus’ birth, but everything to do with his re-birth on Easter Sunday. And for me, the Passion, the story of Jesus’ last days, has always been much more dramatic and mysterious than the Bethlehem story.
I was reminded of this when my wife and I were on holiday last week in San Diego, California. We were looking for a warm place to go, which didn’t really work out as the region had record low temperatures while we were there (frost on the grass each morning doesn’t really inspire a lot of time around the pool). But it was intended as a “doing and seeing things” vacation anyway, as opposed to just reading on the beach. And our most important reason for choosing San Diego was that our actress friend Chilina Kennedy would be there.
Many Uxbridgers know Chilina for her contributions to our theatre scene, as choreographer, and most recently as director of Camelot in January of 2009. But that was before she became a star at the Stratford Festival, and now, after three seasons, she’s going to Broadway in a Stratford show, playing Mary Magdalene in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. But before heading to the Big Apple (where it opens March 22), the show was being showcased at the La Jolla Playhouse in the San Diego suburbs. We saw it there last Tuesday, and it brought back a lot of memories.
You see, Superstar and I go way back. If you’re of sufficient vintage, you will know that before the show was a play or a Norman Jewison movie, it was a “concept album”, a two-record set released by Webber and lyricist Tim Rice in 1969. It became popular in Canada in the spring of 1971, and by the fall of that year, a touring concert version had been mounted by an Edmonton rock band called Privilege, and they recruited some local singers to play smaller roles and swell the chorus. So for 18 months, while the first theatrical version was being mounted on Broadway, I toured the western hemisphere in a concert version, playing Caiaphas the chief priest, singing all the chorus numbers, and playing third trumpet to boot.
I have lots of stories about that tour, but the only one that counts in this context is that, as it is supposed to do, Jesus Christ Superstar made me think hard about exactly who Jesus was and why he was important to me. I was 21 when I joined the tour. For 15 years, I had been singing every Sunday in church, listening to sermons and joining in when the congregation prayed. But for those 15 years, I realized that I hadn’t done a lot of meaningful thinking about exactly what being a Christian meant.
In his libretto for the rock opera, Tim Rice raised a lot of questions which, as a reasonably intelligent lad, I should have been asking long before the age of 21. Most importantly, why was Jesus’ death (Superstar doesn’t really deal with his resurrection) such a big deal? Why should someone die for my sins? Was Jesus really the son of God, or just a misguided “puppet” (as he’s called by Pilate, for me the most intriguing character in the play)? Why has the life and death of Christ mattered to so many millions of people for 2000 years? As Judas asks of Jesus in the title song, “Was that a mistake, or did you know your messy death would be a record-breaker”?
Forty years on, Superstar is still powerful, and those questions are still important. And perhaps most telling for my own story, I still haven’t answered them to my own satisfaction. And that’s why watching a performance of the show is equally thrilling, and troubling. If the Passion of Christ really matters (and by extension, his birth at Christmas), maybe it’s time I figured it out, one way or the other.
