SWEET JESUS! The cast of the defunct Jesus Christ Superstar at a recent press conference.The touring all-star revival of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical — which on paper read like an Onion story or a script from an SNL sketch — is indeed too weird to be true after all.
Jesus Christ Superstar, featuring the wildly disparate cast of John Rotten Lydon (Public Image LTD, Sex Pistols) as King Herod, Brandon Boyd (Incubus) as Judas Iscariot, Michelle Williams (Destiny’s Child) as Mary Magdalene, JC Chasez (*NSYNC) is Pontius Pilate and actor Ben Forster as Jesus Christ, has been canceled. All tickets will be refunded — including a performance at the Tampa Bay Times Forum scheduled for June 15.
The New York Times has an interesting feature on the debacle. It calls into question the tour’s high-profile promoter, Michael Cohl, who has mainly worked with rock groups like U2 and the Rolling Stones and was a lead producer of the problem-plagued Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
Boyd Tweeted his disappointment on Friday evening: "I got fired from #JesusChristSuperstar today....but so did the rest of the cast so we're all sad together," he wrote. "Yeah, it's true. Tour cancelled."
Also on Twitter: a shot of people from the production expressing their opinion with a raised middle finger.