Godspell (Hornchurch)

The Queen's Theatre in Hornchurch goes in for musicals. The current building opened with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1975 and the spring 2014 season ends with Godspell. It's a show which seems to have been almost continuously on-stage somewhere or other in the UK since 1971.

I saw it then at the Roundhouse in north London. Or it might have been on the transfer to Wyndham's some months later. I confess that it's not a theatrical experience which has stayed with me, so Matt Devitt's new production comes over as fresh without any baggage from previous stagings.

Sam Kordbacheh's towering performance as Jesus apart, the heroes of the evening are the set design by Mark Walters and the lighting by Mark Dymock. The set spills out into the auditorium, bisected by a sort of Noh-inspired bridgeway which allows the performers access to the audience, and suggests a graffiti-daubed skateboard city. Costumes are casual street-wear.

The cast has fun with the parables. Sean Needham suggests that in many ways John (the Baptist) and Judas are two sides of the same personality. Kodbacheh has something of the extended angularity one associated with Orthodox Christian art and he projects a marvellous blend of asexual charisma, at once engaging and yet oh-so-slightly threatening.

Musically, it's very loud and I feel that the sequence of reprises after the curtain calls could well be cut. "Day by Day" and "All for the Best" are the most successful of the numbers. There's something about the naïveté of the material with its presentation suggesting a low-key revivalist meeting which keeps the audience on-side. But it's Kordbacheh who makes the show.

Godspell runs at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch until 7 June.