Godspell

The name headlining all the advance publicity for this tour is Stephen Gately, late of Boyzone and several West End musicals, but he decided to withdraw from the production at short notice.

This was good news for Tom Bradley, finalist on the TV show Grease Is the Word, who now plays Jesus. In fact it’s even better news for the audience because he invests the role with an understated and non-cloying sincerity that is totally convincing. You really believe that he can keep this gang under control by getting them to act out and understand the parables.

And it is a gang. Earlier productions have had the characters as Hippies, street entertainers, white face clowns or, in a memorable production I saw some years ago, children in a nursery using their toys as props. This lot are a bunch of kids playing in a ruined abbey, and a great bunch they are too, full of high-octane energy that really keeps things moving.

It obviously helps to have a five piece band behind the abbey wall, belting out the music for all it’s worth. Their playing is terrific if at times so loud they drown out the cast, miked though they are. Generally, though, the songs are delivered to great effect.

What makes this such a great Godspell is the impact the parables have. There are a lot of modern references in this production’s script, as well as a lot of wonderfully bad jokes that I suspect were not in the original.

So when it comes to the Prodigal Son the enacting of it is very funny, visually and verbally, but the point of the parable comes through loud and clear. That’s even truer of the Parable of the Sower and as for the Dividing of the Sheep from the Lambs, you’ve never heard wittier animal noises.

The whole show is full of surprises from a totally unexpected Torvill and Dean routine to the answer to what was in the brown bag under the table at the Last Supper (you’ll have to see the show to find out).

It’s a great company show and this is a very good company. It’s unfair but, as well as Tom Bradley I must single out Ryan Molloy’s Judas, a class act as song and dance man and betrayer. Under Paul Kerryson’s sharp direction this Godspell isn’t even slightly dated, and there's no trace of the sort of tweeness that can so often afflict this show. It’s a wow of a production.