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I was watching the Top 10 moments of Jesus Christ Superstar and as I was watching Norm Lewis sing in #9, it reminded me of his performance as Javert in Les Miserables that I saw in this concert I saw on PBS years ago:


And that led me to this, Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel doing Confrontation.  They apparently used to do this backstage on How I Met Your Mother all the time. I love it!


Now I'm off to listen to Les Mis!

Jesus Christ Superstar LIVE on NBC

I recorded last night's Jesus Christ Superstar intending to watch it this weekend.  I was looking forward to seeing it, but didn't have super high expectations because: 1) I'm not a huge John Legend fan and, 2) NBC has done pretty poorly with their previous ventures into live Broadway shows.  The Sound of Music was terrible, and The Wiz should have been good, but was rather dull.  I think part of the problem was that there was no live audience for either show.  It's weird for a song to end and not hear any applause.  The Sound of Music had bigger problems with terrible casting.  When FOX tackled Grease, they had a live audience and the show had so much more energy and was so well done.

WELL.  I ended up watching all of JCS last night after seeing a few comments on Twitter, and wow.  They knocked my socks off.  The show was fantastic.  John Legend, as Jesus, did a fine job.  Sara Bareilles has such an angelic voice and was wonderful as Mary Magdelene.  But man.  Brandon Victor Dixon, who played Judas, was OUTSTANDING.  The show was SO good.  The staging and the production and the music and the lighting and the performances--everything about it was so damn good. The Crucifixion scene was stunning.  Someone on Twitter said they'd never seen such exquisite staging.  It was really so beautiful.  I'm so glad I watched last night.  Much respect to NBC for this turn of events.  I'm going to keep this on my TiVo and will definitely be watching again.

UPDATE:  I came back to add a link to this Playbill review.  I agree with everything.