I have never been particularly disposed towards the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber, given that one of his musicals is about singing cats, and another one concerns railway engines on roller skates. You will understand, then, why the prospect of a musical based on the last days of Christ filled me with a sense of trepidation and dread. Such trepidation, I was to discover, would prove to be unfounded.

The show, performed by the Central Hall Musical Society, was launched amidst a degree of controversy. Rehearsals had been overshadowed by rumours that a particular Christian society on campus were planning to protest at the opening performance. Matters were only unsettled further when an anonymous letter from a member of Jewish Society to York Vision, blasting the show as “anti-Semitic and blasphemous” and its lyrics as “tasteless and totally unacceptable”, demanded that the show “be banned from campus for being of a totally unsuitable nature”.

The production itself was a somewhat innovative take on the West End show. The twelve disciples were played by a mixture of men and women, and this equality of the sexes gave the show a resonance much more familiar to modern times. The cast were donned in much more contemporary dress (baggy jeans and t-shirts instead of biblical robes; trainers instead of sandals, and a few dancers dressed in black leather…) which was instrumental in distancing the show from its previous traditional interpretation. The set was also noticeably different. Instead of following biblical tradition in filling the temple with loansharks and money lenders, there were among other things, cocaine dealers, prostitutes and a gambling den.

The performance of the cast was exceptional. Ian McClusky gave an outstanding performance as Jesus Christ, managing to express the Saviour’s torment and mental anguish without an over-dramatic emotional overload. He worked spectacularly alongside Leanne Sedin, who played Mary Magdalene. Together they gave a performance which emphasised the controversy surrounding the mixed messages of love and dedication between the two, elucidated recently in The Da Vinci Code. Sedin’s simple lyrical singing style sat in an appealing contrast to the dramatic, almost operatic, singing of McClusky.

Steve Scott gave a performance of Pilate which managed to portray the conflict of a man who has incredible power and authority, but who is in a situation in which he knows he will come off the worse. Ellie Cox gave a sultry performance as the prostitute Jezebel, which was seductive in singing, acting and dress. Matthew Barlow’s short but spectacular performance of King Herod made the mad king out to be an absolute fruitcake, just as nutty as the traditionalists like it. Tom Appleton, playing Caiaphas, portrayed the High Priest as a dangerous, and inherently evil, cult leader. Unfortunately, it seemed that his singing was not as strong as that of the rest of the cast, and he often failed to bring out the menacing quality of the low notes in his performance.

However, for me, the star of the show was Oliver Griffiths, playing Judas Iscariot. His performance brought out the torment of a man who knows that he is doomed by fate, feels that he is both betrayed by God, and neglected by a man whom he once thought of as a friend. His singing had much of the same impassioned frenzy as McClusky’s Christ, and the scenes between the two characters were some of the most emotionally charged in the whole production.

The show was of a quality which I might expect to see in a professional theatre. I may still not be the greatest of Lloyd Webber’s admirers, but the shows producers, Alexander Hargreaves and Thomas Hunt, created a show which brought the story electrically to life. This was a production of amateur dramatics, which was anything but amateur.

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