By Harry Haun
23 Mar 2012

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In the throes of what she calls "the best theatre experience of my life so far," Chilina Kennedy beautifully executes the show's biggest hit, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," an odd admission for an old pro like Mary Magdalene — then again not, said Kennedy. "So many of us are in that situation in real life. I find it a very truthful, beautifully simple love song" — but not without its drawbacks, she allowed: "I think you can get a little bit of pressure if a song is too famous. When I get to that point in the show, I always think of it as a monologue — something very unique to what I'm experiencing in the moment. I try not to think of it as 'Omigosh, Yvonne Elliman made it so famous.' If any of those notions start to enter your head, you're kinda doomed so I try to keep how famous it is out of my psyche."

True to the show-must-go-on, the Judas (Josh Young) went on, having missed the three previous performances (all of them, dammit, critics' performances) because of illness. To his credit, he didn't cough on stage until after his curtain call.

"Ah, you caught that!" he grinned. "It was a little difficult. I have a little respiratory infection that I've been battling for the last week, but it's gotten much better this morning — thank God! — and I'm just so happy to be back with the cast doing it again.

"It's so hard to be away from this cast because we're all like a family. We've been running for nine months in Stratford and La Jolla. This was the second time I've been sick. Out of our 170 shows, I've missed four or five so that's a pretty good track record. I hope to keep it that same number right now. I had to put my health first. The show is the most important thing to me so I did all that I could to get better. I stayed home and I got on a puffer and I steamed a lot and I drank a lot of water, and I said, 'Hell or high water, I'm going to make it on tonight.' And I was able to do it."

	Jeremy Kushnier
	Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

James the Lesser (Jeremy Kushnier) was elevated to Judas during Young's absence. The actor has already amassed some Broadway credits (Footloose and Rent) and done time on the road (Next to Normal, Aida and five companies of Jersey Boys) so it wasn't that big of a problem. Indeed, one critic was of the opinion his performance was the best thing about the show.

Kushnier, in the meantime, pooh-poohed his contribution as part of the service: "I didn't think about it. I thought about going in and doing my job. You know what I mean? My job is to be there when they need me. It's a great honor to have that kind of pressure put on. In fact, it's a huge honor to just be a part of this piece. Then, to help out however I can was really fun. This score is amazing. This is the kind of score I grew up listening to, and, when I think about the kind of theatre I want to do, it's this. It's rock 'n' roll. We really think about Andrew and Tim when they wrote this. They were kids who couldn't get the piece produced originally. Now, we're the kids."

Tom Hewitt, who has done musicals of Dracula and Zhivago for McAnuff, makes a cool, collected, rather dignified Pontius Pilate. "I'm no fool: I let the purple suit do the work for me," he cracked. "I like where Pilate falls in the story. On this locomotive of a story, my car latches on toward the end and catapults the play to the end, and I love that dynamic. I love having that part of the storytelling."

The big razzle-dazzle, buck-and-wing novelty number ["Herod's Song"] gets proper hard-selling from Bruce Dow, who gladly puts up with loads of off-stage time just for that ditty. Backstage, he said, "I climb the walls. I do my nails. They're silver, black and sparkly — they're for the role, certainly not a personal expression at all. The show happens so fast. I'm in the opening sequence and at the end of Act One, then I do the number and we do the end of the show, and that's it. It goes so fast."

Mike Nadajewski enjoys the luxury of playing his favorite apostle: "Peter's got great heart — a big, big heart. He started the church, the bedrock of the church. I'm always trying to find one thing I can hook into to get me in the character. This came because Peter and Mary share moments like his denial of Christ.

"We're all thrilled to be here together. Of course, we're all a repertory company from Stratford. We've been doing this show for a year in rep with Camelot. I played Mordred. It was my season of betrayal. I'm just misunderstood, man!"

 Continued...