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Kate Bush performing ‘Hounds of Love’ at the Brit Awards (1986)

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Björk and Jarvis Cocker

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Rolling Stone USA June 13 1991 by Steven Meisel

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JCS 2012 twin productions x Just A Man (Epic the musical)

The 2012 twin productions meaning UK arena tour and Broadway revival tour which came out the same year, but extra compelling to me that other than sharing a year, everything else in these prods are complete opposites.

Also likely the most high effort video clip i've made, or at least in a while because it's so heavy on half-animations (look at that fire) and it's rightfully taken me days and driven me nuts

Please like it i spent so much time and sanity on it

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when they were still good husbands <3

yesss i went to see JCS vienna concert 2025 on April 13, 16, 17!!

oedo kuipers jesus & serkan kaya judas!!!

they were both amazing and such a good match

they were like as if they were mozart (yes oedo is so mozart lol and i feel like this makes sense since mozart himself also was a superstar) christ superstar🤟 and his producer or something

god i’ll never forget the performance

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What did Andrew Lloyd Webber do to make Patti Lupone upset? Sorry, saw your tags and i was curious

Oh.

Oh honey.

You sweet child.

Anyway, get ready for one of the most infamous showdowns in all musical theatre history, with the guy who writes the straightest musicals on Broadway (derogatory) and the one and only, the matriarch, the queen, two three-time Tony award winner Patti LuPone.

So, Andrew Lloyd Webber was basically kind of a boy genius in his prime - he met his future collaborator Tim Rice when they were 17 and 20 respectively, he wrote his first big hit, Jesus Christ Superstar, at 22, with Tim Rice writing the lyrics. And it was kind of a big deal at the time because the topic was controversial (you know, the Passion with rock music), but also because Broadway wasn't that far off from its golden age and let's just say the music and style were very different from, say, My Fair Lady. Or The Sound of Music. Or Funny Girl. It was basically the Rent/Hamilton of its time. (Yeah, Stephen Sondheim was around at that time, he worked on West Side Story which was revolutionary in of itself, but he's kind of an oddball in this case. You'll understand why later.)

Their real follow up (I'm not counting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a variety of reasons) was a little musical called Evita, which you might know mainly because of a song called Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Or at least, your mom has probably heard it once at the very least. It's that song that's oversung from a musical while being out of context along with I Dreamed a Dream for Les Misérables. Or Memory from Cats.

Evita tells the story of Eva Peron, the wife of an Argentinian dictator, who basically screws her way to the top and ends up becoming the mistress of Juan Peron and the most beloved woman in her country through guile and deceit. Yes, I know the historical accuracy is very much debated but I know jackshit about Argentina's history except the bare basics so don't come at me. It was first produced in the West End in London, with Elaine Paige in the role, but because of Equity issues, she couldn't reprise her role for the Broadway production. So a Julliard graduate who was mostly starring in David Mamet plays got the part instead, and that was Patti LuPone.

Patti... did not have a good time during Evita, because the part is basically the kind of score where you can tell the composer is used to writing male parts, but most female singers have a two-octave range (yes, you got Julie Andrews who used to have a three-octave range, and many others, but they're exceptions), so she struggled a lot. That being said, if you listen to live recordings of her, you wouldn't be able to tell, and it got a lot easier later on. But she had this to say:

"Evita was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee."

This is from Patti's autobiography, which she wrote in 2007 - 8 years after shit with ALW went down. With all that said, she won a Tony Award for Evita, and she pretty much became a musical theatre household name from then on. She played Fantine in Les Misérables, Nancy in Oliver!, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Meanwhile, ALW's next big hits were Cats (I'm not even kidding, Cats was a hit), and, you guessed it, The Phantom of the Opera, which he wrote in part to showcase his then wife Sarah Brightman's triple threat talents.

So, you need to understand before I continue that ALW, from my perspective, has always had a bit of an inferiority complex. He's basically associated to writing these commercially successful musicals that show a big spectacle but aren't ultimately substantial. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think that if he didn't have Hal Prince, Maria Bjornson, Charles Hart and Gillian Lynne backing him up for Phantom, it would have probably been a Rocky Horror Picture Show knockoff people would have forgotten about pretty quickly. This is what I mean:

Yep, that was Phantom before any of the people I mentioned above (and Michael Crawford) were really involved.

Remember how I said Stephen Sondheim was an oddball? The thing with him is that his musicals weren't always commercially successful, but in general, in part thanks to being Leonard Bernstein's protégé, he was generally pretty well-respected and it was considered that his work was bringing musicals to a whole other level. Without Sondheim, you wouldn't have Jonathan Larson, and you wouldn't have Lin-Manuel Miranda. I am convinced ALW is resentful of that, and when you stop and think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's so obvious he REALLY wants to be Sondheim or at least command the same level of respect, but that's a story for another day.

So, after Phantom, ALW had other musicals that followed that either got a meh reception or outright flopped. Then there was Sunset Boulevard, which is based on the movie of the same name with Gloria Swanson. Despite all of her griefs for Evita, Patti LuPone agreed to partake in the musical as Norma Desmond, for its production in London, with the promise that she would transfer to Broadway once that production would open. And overall, after a string of flops, Sunset was actually doing pretty well.

HOWEVER. One day, while reading the gossip column of a newspaper, Patti found out that contrary to what she was promised, Glenn Close, who was meanwhile starring as Norma in the Los Angeles production, was to play Norma on Broadway. That was a complete surprise for her since no one on the production team had bothered to tell her it was happening - and keep in mind that for the news to come up the way it did in a gossip column, it probably would have necessitated a delay of a few weeks between the producers and the newspaper, which would have given them plenty of time to break the news to Patti. And Patti kind of needed the leg up because she was pretty bitter that a) Madonna was cast in the Evita adaptation instead of her; b) they actually lowered the key to fit Madonna's voice range, and she still had to expand her own to be able to sing the (lowered) score. And trust me, Patti is mad about it to this day.

So of course, she trashed her dressing room, the cast and crew weren't even mad about it because they were as shocked and angered as she was by the news. Patti sued Andrew Lloyd Webber for breach of contract, namely for 1 MILLION DOLLARS (yup, those are the real numbers), won, used the money she got from the lawsuit to get a swimming pool, which she called (and I SHIT YOU NOT) the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. Since then, Webber is dead to her, to the point rumor has it she had part of a building blocked during an event so she could get out of it without coming across Webber, because she hates him so flipping much she doesn't even want to be in the same building as the guy.

(There's also drama that happened with Faye Dunaway who was supposed to replace Glenn Close after she went from Los Angeles to Broadway, except they abruptly closed the show down after Close left, but that's a story for another day)

So with all the bad press, and with ALW forced to pay 1 million dollars for Patti's lawsuit, that led Sunset's productions to close earlier than expected. ALW has stayed around since, with... mitigated output, so to say. The lowest point for a lot of people is Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom, which some people love, and that's fine, but it didn't do well with either critics nor fans of the original show, which ALW is EXTREMELY BUTTHURT ABOUT. And like, there are so many stories I could tell about LND alone, but I will share my own crack theory about it, since it does relate to the ask.

Anyway, buckle up.

So. There have been jokes going around for years that the Phantom in LND is basically ALW's self-insert, where he displays to the world that he's totally not over Sarah Brightman leaving him (in part because making Phantom kinda ruined their marriage lmao), despite, you know, having married since. (Aaaaaakward.) So LND basically becomes this really uncomfortable therapy session where a man writes a self-insert musical about how his ex-wife made a big mistake of leaving a sensitive artistic soul such as himself. The characters from Phantom who appear in LND are all more or less unrecognizable as a result, and one who gets it worse (in my humble opinion) is Meg Giry, who was basically Christine's sweet and loyal ballerina friend who basically went into the Phantom's lair on her own to save her friend despite the danger. In LND, she's basically a bitter hag (because ALW hates women, guess Patti was right about that), who really likes the swim and even has a stripping vaudeville number about it, written in universe by the Phantom, no less.

For comparison, here's Don Juan Triumphant (the Phantom's opera in the original):

And here's Bathing Beauty (the vaudeville number):

Yeah, so... do you see why people hate LND already?

And that's not the only thing with Meg! She's also pining for the Phantom to pay attention to her and threatens to drown the Phantom and Christine's secret love child when he makes it clear that he's gonna love Christine for EVA AND EVA.

So, with everything we learned today about ALW, would someone like him view someone like Patti LuPone as some sort of crazy, bitter diva who's obsessed with him for whatever reason? Absolutely. Would he be petty enough to insert Patti LuPone into his self-insert musical, which gave us the version of Meg Giry we got in LND? Of course. Why does Meg love to swim so much and why does she drag Gustave out ostensibly for a swim? Is it a dig at Patti's Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool? Maybe.

I kind of hope we find out one day if that theory is true. And maybe start a kickstarter so Patti can add this painting from the 2004 movie in her collection.

Fun fact: during the process of casting for the 2004 movie adaptation of POTO, ALW allegedly suggested Patti LuPone to play Carlotta... only for Joel Schumacher to have to awkwardly remind him that they were not on speaking terms. The idea was therefore promptly dropped.

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My Beautiful Laundrette: Continuity, costume notes, polaroids

These extensive costume and continuity notes were produced during the filming of My Beautiful Laundrette, a 1985 film written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Stephen Frears. Originally devised for television, Kureishi’s first screenplay was shot on a low budget in only six weeks. Set in Thatcher-era south London, the film is a ground-breaking exploration of race, class, politics and sexuality. It centres on Omar, a young British-Pakistani man who is given the opportunity to renovate his uncle’s laundrette, and Johnny, his boyhood friend who has fascist sympathies and who becomes Omar’s lover. The romantic relationship between these young men develops alongside the film’s other concerns ─ such as the British Asian struggle to maintain ethnic identity while assimilating into Western society, represented by Papa Hussain, an alcoholic, disillusioned socialist, and Uncle Nasser, a rich entrepreneur. The film stars Saeed Jaffrey (Nasser), Roshan Seth (Papa Hussain), Daniel Day Lewis (Johnny) and Gordon Warnecke (Omar). My Beautiful Laundrette became a huge commercial and critical success after it was applauded by film critics at the Edinburgh Film Festival, leading to international distribution for cinema in 1986 and an Oscar nomination for Kureishi. What are continuity notes? When shooting a film, continuity notes are logged for every take to ensure continuity between screen direction, action, costume, props, and so on. Photographs, like the Polaroids shown here, support the work. Written in a messy hand, these notes convey the sense of an animated atmosphere on set. For a film that is so concerned with identity and boundaries between characters, the continuity notes emphasise the role of costume as a signifier of status. Note the flash suit and aviator sunglasses worn by nouveau riche drug trafficker Salim, and the transformation of Omar from an unemployed lad in jeans and sweatshirt to the cleaned-up, suited businessman who is increasingly swayed by Thatcherite economic competiveness.

© Hanif Kureishi (Screenwriter), Penny Eyles (Script supervisor) Held by the British Library (1) (2) (3) Individual pieces in the link

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I've acquired a creature that stares at you no matter which direction you look at it from

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redraw of a manuscript illumination with Judas Iscariot short film's Jesus by @saintlycharles

ooohkay this was supposed to be warmup sketch but i got carried away clearly as far as giffing the gilding glint but anyway heres the reference

Christ in the letter "U" (originally posted by @hildegards-abbey) Breviary; Northern Germany, 2nd half of the 15th century: Harley MS 2975, f. 73v

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when serauncia likes my jcs art i know i cooked

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For easter, some of my favorite JCS Judases since i've never made this kind of lineup and over the years i've seen a few artists make this for their faves

List of prods:

1973 JCS film

2000 JCS film

2005 Amstetten tour

1973 Godspell film

2012 broadway revival tour

2012 UK arena tour

2014 swedish arena tour

2018 NBC

2018 catalan production

50th anniversary US tour

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I’m truly obsessed with the 1996 JCS production’s Last Supper. They commit so hard to the drunk apostles. The way some sing slightly out of time or shout lyrics. The way it gets more pronounced as the night goes on and the Jesus-Judas divorce is going down. No one is doing it like them

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Judas short film fanart please check this out it's so cool

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awwwwwwwww

Jesus/Judas pairs as marshmallow peeps roulette (mostly JCS)

Screenshot to see if you can catch your favorite :))))

List of pairings under cut

2000 JCS film

1973 JCS film

JCS 2005 Amstetten tour

JCS 2012 broadway revival tour

JCS 2012 UK arena tour

JCS 2014 swedish arena tour

JCS 2018 NBC recording

JCS 2018 production by Big Act (nicknamed RoseJCS)

JCS 2018 Catalan production

JCS 50th anniversary tour

Godspell 1973 film

Godspell 2011 revival tour

Last Days Of Judas Iscariot Champlayers production

Judas Comic by Jeff Loveness and Jakub Rebelka

I made this in honor of easter season rolling back, you know what that means: new jcs tag lurkers helloooo i hope they enjoy this

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moodboard

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when you wake up next to him, in the middle of noon, with your thorns in your crown you're nothing more than his son, and when you think about me all of those years ago, you're standing face to face with I told you so—————————