After experiencing a memorable performance of Puccini's La Bohème at the Domstufenfestspiele last year, I wanted to attend again this year, now that Theater Erfurt is staging Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber (°1948) and Tim Rice (°1944) on the steps of the Dom.
There are performances that tell a story, and there are performances that make you think above all about the way stories are created. Jesus Christ Superstar belongs – particularly in the new production by Theater Erfurt – to that second category. Anyone expecting a religious account of the final days of Jesus of Nazareth on the Domstufen will find something different: a rock opera about power and manipulation, about admiration and fear, but especially about what happens when a human being is turned into an icon – and when someone who knows him intimately begins to doubt the image that has been created of him.
Moreover, it is a special place to see this performance. The Domstufen are the steps that believers climbed for centuries, in search of peace, hope, salvation, answers to questions. At the very top, at the entrance to the Dom, hangs an image of Jesus on the cross; before it, a completely different version of the same story unfolds. The Dom and the Severikirche form the historical backdrop against which everything takes place. On the steps stand seven golden picture frames, scattered across the stage, with one central frame in the middle where the most important events occur. At the bottom stands the word Love as a kind of fundamental tone of the performance. Love is the central message, but at the same time it is precisely what the characters continually come into conflict over. That this production continues to attract large audiences was evident on this evening: the performance was completely sold out.
One technical point deserves to be mentioned beforehand, as it kept returning throughout the evening. The orchestra and rock band do not play on the Domstufen themselves, but some distance away in the theatre; the music is transmitted synchronously via loudspeakers, while the choir and soloists do sing live on the steps. As soon as the rock band started playing, the orchestra often faded into the background; sometimes you almost got the impression that only the band was playing. In the sparse, restrained passages – dark strings, few instruments – the orchestra, on the other hand, could show what it really had to offer.
At the bottom hung a screen showing the musicians at the beginning and announcing the various events during the piece. This immediately raises the question of why, if you're going to the effort of naming the events, there was no surtitling. The singers were frequently drowned out, even though they sang amplified. For those unfamiliar with the work in German, the text was therefore not always easy to follow.
A Jesus who has lost himself
An ambulance arrives with sirens blaring and Jesus is thrown out of it. It is an image that only gains its full meaning in retrospect, but it immediately sets the tone for what follows. This Jesus is not the untouchable figure who stands above his surroundings; sometimes he doesn't seem to know exactly what he's doing. And that is precisely what Judas seems to see first.
When the actual history begins, Jesus is presented in this production as a kind of flower power guru: someone surrounded by followers who sees good and love in everyone. A shop with love for sale even appears on stage. The group moves almost like a community around a charismatic leader. Judas – played by Til Ormeloh, with a naturel that would carry the entire evening – is visibly out of place. You see him doubting even before he sings a word about it: can this really be the way they should go? When Simon Zelotes (Lukas Witzel) – a small role with a pleasant voice – appears armed with soldiers, that doubt becomes even more concrete. Jesus refuses resolutely: no war, no violence, no power struggle.
This immediately makes clear that this production makes Jesus not so much the central figure, but above all Judas. He is the doubter, the one who ultimately betrays his best friend, but also the character with whom an audience can most easily identify. For Judas is not only the man who commits betrayal; he is first and foremost the man who no longer understands what his friend is becoming. The longer he looks at Jesus, the stronger the suspicion becomes that the man he knew is disappearing behind the image others are creating of him.
Moreover, this idea has a much older tradition than the rock opera itself. When I saw this performance, I couldn't help but think of the famous altar by Tilman Riemenschneider in the main church of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, in which Judas notably emerges as a central figure, alongside and not merely subordinate to Jesus. This makes Peter Lund's choice all the more interesting: Judas is not acquitted, but made into a human being in whom human doubt, love and ultimately failure become recognizable.
Lukas Mayer plays Jesus with full commitment and has a pleasant voice that at times is even fragile. He clearly knows the role inside and out. Yet he sometimes lacks just that pronounced character that would be needed to truly stand up to the intensity of Ormeloh. That Jesus is presented less strongly as an individual character gives Judas just the space to draw the drama toward himself.
The temple scene itself also contains one of the simplest and at the same time strongest inventions of the evening: the word sale, sale, sale appears in all the picture frames. Everything is for sale, everything costs almost nothing. At the same time, Jesus' inner conflict is literally depicted here when he drives the merchants out of the temple: red bands hang from him, held by figures pulling at them – a man who is as it were pulled apart by everything that is demanded of him. The sale symbolism connects directly to the unrest that has been growing in Judas from the beginning: the message of love and community stands here against a world in which everything has become tradeable. It is not a complicated symbol, but it works no less for that.
Maria Magdalena, portrayed by Ks. Katja Bildt, initially comes too little into her own in the first part. In Everything's Alright she remains too much in the background. Only in I Don't Know How to Love Him, at the end of the first part, does she have her strongest moment. There Bildt convincingly conveys how strange her love actually is: she and Jesus are different from each other, but that does not make her feeling any less strong. She doesn't know how to love him, but she knows she can't help it.
The first part ends with the blood money that Judas receives. In retrospect, this proves to be a meaningful turning point. The first half is mainly preparation: the characters are introduced, their mutual relationships are built up and Judas' hesitation gains increasing weight. Only after the intermission does it become clear why Judas commits his betrayal and why Jesus can or will not adapt his vision.
And the puzzle pieces fall into place
After the intermission, the direction takes a slightly blasphemous, but highly effective interpretation of the Last Supper. The apostles lie drunk at the table or stumble around, admittedly sung with precision, while Judas and Jesus conduct their own reckoning at the front. Betray me then, Jesus seems to say. Judas replies that Jesus doesn't understand why he is doing this, that he has denied himself. The contrast between the celebrating, unknowing group and the two men who seem to already know their fate belongs to the most clever things the direction showed that evening.
Then comes Gethsemane, the moment when Jesus explicitly asks whether the cup may pass from him. It is a poignant moment, for the rock opera falls almost completely silent here and only a human remains with his fear. Jesus tells how long he has been dealing with this: three years, thirty years, at one point even ninety years – a timeframe that no longer seems to be reality, but a measure of the exhaustion that takes hold of him. The superstar disappears; what remains is someone who realizes what awaits him and, despite everything, cannot walk away from it. Lukas Mayer also finds more of the character in this scene that sometimes was lacking before. Here Jesus is no longer the charismatic guru, but the human behind the image.
The betrayal itself is subsequently given special power by the choir. From a distance, Warum, warum sounds, as if a voice outside the events responds to what is happening on the steps. The choir is not always visible, which gives it something slightly elusive: sometimes it seems like a voice from above, sometimes a collective conscience, sometimes simply the reaction of a community that does not understand what is happening.
In the interrogation scenes, there are two strong supporting roles. Rainer Zaun as Pontius Pilatus initially has little to portray in his military uniform, but when he must condemn Jesus and washes his hands in innocence, desperation becomes palpable – the look of someone who no longer knows what to do with the man opposite him. That human doubt makes this Pilatus more than a functionary who simply executes a decision.
Máté Sólyom-Nagy then makes something completely different of Herodes. Herodes' Song becomes almost a grotesque show number, with a colorful ensemble around him. Jesus is not treated here as a king, messiah or extraordinary human, but as an entertainer who must entertain his audience. In an almost absurd way, the scene makes visible what the entire production ultimately comes down to: what happens when someone is no longer seen as a human, but as a spectacle?
Finally, two choices around Judas stand out. His death is not shown here, as is traditional, as suicide, but as a murder by one of the high priests. That seems at first glance to be a minor directorial choice, but it does change the way you look at the character. Judas becomes not the man who succumbs to his own guilt, but someone who is ultimately destroyed by the same power mechanism that he himself has participated in.
After his death, he returns once more, for an iron-strong dance moment in which he mocks Jesus. The direction seamlessly connects this with the rest of the production. It is as if Judas, even when the story has already written him off, claims one last time the right to determine how he is seen. It is a final, almost ironic confirmation of the fact that this production is ultimately at least as much about Judas as it is about Jesus.
The crucifixion itself, depicted in the central painting frame, is remarkably restrained. Because the production elsewhere deals so inventively with images and symbolism, this scene feels almost surprisingly conventional. You can wonder whether the crucifixion couldn't have been more than this; on the other hand, that simplicity, after the bling-bling with Herodes, hits hard, especially when Jesus asks for his mother.
What follows after Jesus' death is musically very impressive. The instrumental finale achieves an intensity that the crucifixion itself did not have. The music takes over where the image falls silent and makes the end not a grand spectacle, but a kind of retrospective of everything that preceded it.
Who is really the superstar here?
What ultimately makes this production strongest is the shift in focus that Peter Lund maintains from beginning to end. It is not Jesus, but Judas who becomes the figure in which the audience most easily recognizes itself – and that makes Til Ormeloh the undisputed center of this production. His naturalism, his constant doubt and his visible discontent with the direction in which Jesus evolves, make him credible without exonerating him. He is neither a hero nor a classical villain, but a human who thinks he can still control a situation and only discovers too late that he himself has become part of the mechanism he wanted to stop.
Against this stands Jesus: the title makes him a superstar, the mass elevates him to an icon, those in power make him a threat and ultimately a victim. But in Gethsemane, all of that falls away for a moment. Then there is no icon, no guru, no messiah and no superstar. There is only a human who is afraid.
And perhaps that is precisely what makes this production on the Domstufen so haunting. Behind the rock opera, behind the mass, the seven golden frames and the monumental churches, a simple but uncomfortable question emerges: what do we do with a human when we make him a superstar?
And what then remains of himself?
PS: For the recognition of readers, I have chosen to name the songs in English, even though the production is sung in the German translation by Timothy Toller (2023).