Toronto Godspell, Fifty Years Later

I have written before of my love of Godspell, most notably in this blog post.   This morning, I came across an interesting article in The Washington Post about a Toronto production of the show back in 1972.

Why on earth should we care?  The Toronto production was a starting point for so many show biz folks who would go on to become very famous, people like Martin Short and Gilda Radner.  It's intriguing to think of these gifted performers as young kids just starting out.

The article both seems like a snapshot of a time long gone as well as an interesting window into the hiring/casting process. It reminds us that sometimes it's not our talent that gets us the job, but dumb luck or someone else dropping out of the position we might have had our eye on or being able to step in at the very last minute. I'm thinking of Paul Shaffer and his story of showing up to fill in for two days playing for the actors who came to audition.   He impressed everyone so much that they asked him to stay and be the show's conductor.  As he recounts, he had just planned to show up and make 20 bucks, and then he got a much larger position.

I'm also intrigued, of course, by the storyline of the musical itself. It seems like such a distant country to think of a time when actors signed up to play Jesus and the disciples. Each show is different because each cast gets to put their own spin on parables. The Toronto production had parables rooted in the 1970s, with references to Nixon and Agnew.

About 20 years ago, I saw a revival of the show on tour, and that's when I first realized that cast members had liberties and that this show was rewritten in many ways. I remember one of their parables was set in the TV show Cops.  Unfortunately I don't remember much more about the parable than that.

It would be interesting to see what a revival of this show looked like now. I think of the movie version of Godspell, the parts of it that were filmed as the World Trade Center was being constructed. Would a current revival reference 9/11, or the pandemic, or the Soviet invasion of Ukraine? There are so many ways to make this musical and the larger gospel message relevant. 

I'd love to see what happened if a revival tried to do just that.