Retelling the old, old story. With song and dance.

As I mentioned on twitter, the other day I watched a DVD of !Hero: The Rock Opera.  Where to begin?

!Hero was created by Christians and (arguably) for Christians.  It’s a retelling of the Gospel story in the modern day, supposing Jesus hadn’t come 2000 years ago, but instead arrived today and was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  To create a Roman government parallel, they’ve created “the world’s iron-fisted government,” ICON, which reminded me of Left Behind‘s post-Rapture government.  This is a rock/rap stage performance, featuring folks like Michael Tait (of dcTalk and Tait), Mark Stuart (of Audio Adrenaline), and Rebecca St. James — the ones I’ve heard of — as well as T-Bone, Nirva, Matt Hammitt of Sanctus Real, Grits, Paul Wright, and John Cooper of Skillet.

I got my hands on a copy of the CD several years back, but never really listened to it much since the opening reference to ICON rubbed me the wrong way and rap isn’t really my thing to begin with.  However, several months ago I gave it another try and, once I started framing it as a Christian-created version of Jesus Christ Superstar, I started warming up to it.  Then, of course, my whole I-like-any-form-of-music-once-I-know-the-words thing kicked in and I ended up really, really liking it.

That prompted me to obtain the DVD (via Ebay) and I watched it last Saturday.  Sigh…

The cast was obviously chosen for their singing abilities, since they can’t really act.  The little dialogue (it’s mostly songs) was atrocious.  The dancing was well-done but the set (which included continual video clips in the background) didn’t always seem to make sense.  One of the biggest offenses, however, was the explanatory screens (e.g., “Hometown Crowds are the Hardest”) before scenes, to ensure the audience understood what it was about.  We wouldn’t want to make the audience think, would we?

My biggest disappointment, however, is that their intention seemed to be more to showcase the artists involved than to create a show that’s reproducible (like Jesus Christ Superstar).  Maybe it just seems that way to me, though, since I don’t have a wealth of rappers at my fingertips.  Musical theatre has its share of Bible stories — Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Children of Eden, etc. — with varying degrees of Biblical orthodoxy.  It would be nice to see a few more added to the repertoire.

I’m intrigued by the thought of doing a Gospel retelling that focuses on individual disciples rather than Jesus — could be an interesting perspective.  I also think it would be interesting to retell it in a way where you aren’t sure until the moment of betrayal which character is Judas.  That could be an interesting way to mess with Christians’ minds and force them to think.