Being a bit of a musical theatre freak, I oft get asked which are my favourite songs from the world of musical theatre… my answer, of course, is always that there are far too many good ones to pick just the one out.

However, what tends to happen with me is that I will find a few bars in certain songs that I absolutely love and really help to make the musical for me, and one of the musicals that I find that this happens is in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Whilst a fantastic musical in its own right (and one of my overall favourites), I absolutely love the metaphor Tim Rice creates through his lyrics of Jesus being a ‘jaded mandarin’ and especially love the way that it’s delivered on stage.  Those few words also seem to be an important phrase in the structure of the musical, causing Jesus to finally lose his patience with Judas, and thus bringing about his ultimate demise.

Below is the song ‘Last Supper’ – a great song, imo, however the whole thing is made for me at 3:30 when this exchange kicks in:

If you look closely, you can see the very yummy Tony Vincent (bleach blond hair) – nom! 😛

For anyone still interested, a jaded mandarin would be interpreted as a “worn-out wise man” – the implication being that a powerful “wise man” who gets worn out is no longer powerful, a has-been.

As a random side note, Judas would be the character that I’d most like to get to play if I was told that I could appear as any character from a musical – I love his songs and reckon the part is very well written! Due to inflation, I’d work for more than 30 pieces of silver though! 😛

/end_of_obscure_musical_related_geekery!