The Nocturne Theatre reinvents Jesus Christ Superstar to thrilling effect by re-situating the famed rock opera in a dystopian version of the world we live in today, and that’s only the beginning.

It helps in this reinvention that Jesus Christ Superstar remains at heart what it started out as in 1970, a 90-minute “concept album” made up of about two dozen songs and scarcely a line of spoken dialog, meaning that a director and a choreographer can pretty much do with it what they will.

The darker cousin to Stephen Schwartz’s cheerier, less vocally demanding (and therefore more frequently revived) Godspell, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar takes us almost immediately to Jesus’s (Diego Huerta-Gutierrez) final days as warnings of the threat the Superstar poses to the Roman empire fall on the deaf ears of locals more concerned with fulfilling their own desires than in worrying whether Jesus is God’s son or a man like any other.

Supporting characters include Mary Magdalene (Chess MacElvaine) of “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” fame; Pontius Pilate (Troy Dailey), whose premonitions of Jesus’s crucifixion have him in a tizzy; high priest Caiaphas (Andrew Diego), who correctly perceives just how dangerous this Jesus might be; fellow priest Annas (Renee Cohen), persuaded by Caiaphas to fear Jesus’s potential for bringing down Rome; Simon Zealotes (AURIAA), one of Jesus’s apostles, and the one who encourages him to fight the Romans: and King Herod (Nathanael O’Neal), who wouldn’t mind being shown even one of Jesus’s famed miracles; and of course the man whose name is now synonymous with betrayal, Judas (Andy Meyers).

If you’ve ever attended Sunday School, you know the rest, which is probably why audiences are able more or less to follow the series of events leading up to the Crucifixion (no Resurrection for this Jesus, unfortunately) even minus dialog or narration.

Whatever the case, it’s precisely because Jesus Christ Superstar lacks even the trace of a traditional book (or line of stage direction for that matter) that any production of it will depend almost entirely on a director’s vision for the ground-breaking rock opera.

And it is indeed quite a vision that director Justin Meyer has for the show!

 Tanya Cyr’s costumes (think Tron meets Star Wars meets Mad Max) signal from the get-go that we’re not in Cecil B. DeMille-land anymore, and things only get wilder as the last week in Jesus’s life unfolds in what Meyer describes as “a surreal, authoritarian, media-saturated dystopia inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall—a collapsing society where spectacle replaces substance, fear replaces truth, and comfort replaces conscience.”

Not only that, but Meyer’s inspired casting choices are both non-traditional and deliberate.

 Huerta-Gutierrez (already a shoo-in for Breakout Performer of the Year for his star turn in Casa 0101’s The Prince Of Egypt) is once again sensational (with stratosphere-reaching vocals to match) in a performance given added resonance by the fact that this Jesus could just as easily be the target of ICE agents as he is of the Biblical Romans.

Meyers’s powerhouse Judas stands in for you and me and the rest of us who feel unmoored in today’s unstable world; MacElvaine’s nonbinary Mary Magdalene not only reaches the stratosphere vocally, they represent another targeted community; O’Neal’s bombastic buffoon of a Herod might as well be sitting in the Oval Office at this very moment; child actor Scarlett Morrow provides added emotional resonance to the production’s final moments; and fab foursome AURIAA, Dailey, Tommi Jo Mongold, and Christopher Thume serve (per the Director’s Note) as a metaphor for social media, news cycles, and misinformation.

All of this adds up to a production that is as innovative as it is sensationally performed, with special snaps to ensemble members Robbie Canevari, Juliet Johnson, Patrick FitzSimmons, Trinity Pedagat, dance captain Sam Tilley, and Danny Castro (as a horned beast of a Satan), whom choreographer Melissa Meyer has dancing virtually nonstop in a variety of modes and moods, often interpreting the inner emotions of main characters, as in MacElvaine’s “I Don’t Know How To Love Him,” no longer simply a vocal solo.

Finally, though it took consulting Meyer’s note for me to completely “get” his concept for the musical’s infamous temple scene, understanding that the Lord’s house was now a school “violated by violence, drugs, trafficking, and political exploitation” landed like a punch in the gut.

Scenic designer Jay Michael Roberts keeps things deliberately spare, the better to spotlight Cyr’s striking array of costumes and director Meyer’s dramatic lighting, and none of this would be nearly as powerful without the production’s superstar live band led by music director Chris Wade on keyboards and featuring Eddy Barco on drums, Audrey Bean on bass, and Lowell Wade on guitar.

Michalis Sichnas is assistant choreographer. Micah Delhauer is assistant lighting designer and stage manager. Matt Merline is stage manager. Rodrigo Garcia is backstage hand.

I’ve now seen five different productions of Jesus Christ Superstar, and though each has been about as unlike the others as a production can be, The Nocturne Theatre’s may well be the most distinctly different of them all.

Then again, I wouldn’t expect less from a company that in less than three years has established itself as a force to be reckoned with on the SoCal musical theater scene, and if I’m not mistaken, the best is to come.

The Nocturne Theatre, 324 N. Orange St., Glendale. Through April 26. See website for detailed performance schedule.
www.TheNocturneTheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
March 13, 2026

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Tags: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Nocturne Theatre, Tim Rice