'Godspell' at the Union Theatre

A blast from the spiritual, hippy, flowers and peace religious past.

There is much to admire and a lot to enjoy in 'Godspell', Stephen Schwartz's 1971 adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew (and a little bit of Luke). It takes the simple tales contained in the New Testament, shakes them free of a lot of the politics of the last couple of thousand years and presents them cheerfully and humorously. Even if it screams love, peace and flares as it does so.

As parables these tales are, as you'd expect, timeless and wise - little stories to try and help you live a better life with others. This production distances itself even further from the religious nature of the source material by hedging it's bets in the opening sequence. A Hawkins type electronic voice charts the beginnings of the Universe implying the connection between science and the metaphoric nature of a lot of what follows.

The songs carry a lot more of the Christian religious symbolism and spiritual dimension of the source material. This isn't all that surprising given that some of the lyrics are taken from traditional hymns. They are also much harder to shift from the late sixties and so where you'll most often be reminded of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' and, indeed, 'Hair'. But roof raisers like 'Day By Day' and 'Prepare Ye...' don't need improvement - though the lyricist could have tried a bit harder to give us more than one chorus.

Oddly, the least satisfying part of the story is the crucifixion. This is the only sequence which relies on the audience having a knowledge of the Greatest Story Ever Told and so doesn't arise from what we are seeing in front of us. Act 2 as a whole doesn't quite manage to lead us through the events with a strong enough narrative and so becomes a sequence of tableaux instead.

The entire cast perform brilliantly. And the jokes are very, very funny. It's not often you see 'Into the Woods', 'A Chorus Line', 'Les Mis' and 'Victoria Wood As Seen On TV' mixed with Bible stories but, judging by the laugh out loud results here, maybe you should.

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