Jesus Christ Superstar, Prince William School’s best ever production? I would like to answer that question with a massive yes and I think I can safely say so would many others. Jesus Christ Superstar is a “challenging piece for any group, particularly for a school” according to Mrs Porter, the director of the schools musical. Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera, which was originally directed by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. For those of you that didn’t see the musical, the outline of the musical is the last week of Jesus’ life. It begins with him arriving in Jerusalem and concludes with his crucifixion.

Mrs Porter on Jesus Christ Superstar: “I have always wanted to do JCS, but always disliked the film-version. We knew we had the singing voices to cast it. To do a fully sung rock opera in a school is really unusual and this was a once in a lifetime chance to do produce it and make all my ideas happen!”

On Friday the 13th, the so called day of bad luck, I went to see the production of Jesus Christ Superstar and was intrigued to see whether the school’s cast could pull off this extremely challenging musical. I don’t think that I have ever enjoyed a school production more than this one. One of the audience members described it as “uplifting”.

I just couldn’t wait for it all to start. As the musical got underway with the song “What’s the buzz”, I looked round at the audience’s faces to see their true reactions, and they all either had huge smiles on their faces or were “catching flies” from amazement.

Mrs Porter on the Cast: “I was blown away! The cast far exceeded my expectations and made my original concept into something even better than I had visualised back in August 2008. They were brilliant and it has been an absolute privilege to have been able to work with them.”

The cast, chorus and band were fantastic. It was astonishing to see that we had such talent hidden behind the walls of PWS. One particular cast member who deserves special metion was Leilani Barrett, who played Mary Magdalene. At only 14, she truly blew me away. Other audience members agreed that she was “a real talent” and “a future professional”. It was also amazing to find out that certain cast members only joined a month or two before the performance.

Mrs Porter on getting involved with school productions: “I trained as a professional opera singer and earned my living doing this for a number of years. I also worked as a professional stage manager and as a production assistant on operas, ballets and musicals. So in my previous schools and now with JCS, I have been able to combine both of my career strands together!”

The cast’s costumes were very simple, with just jeans and t-shirts. As the musical itself is very powerful and doesn’t need dressing up with flamboyant costumes, it allowed the audience to focus on the performance rather than the costumes.

Seeing as Jesus Christ Superstar is such a a testing musical to perform, I wondered if it at times ever got stressful and perhaps a little too much. Jessica Hodges who played the part of “maid” in the musical said, “The support from all the cast members and everyone involved made it really enjoyable. I loved every second of it.”

Mrs Porter on stressful times: “Doing a school production is always stressful – time, people, resources and so on, but to work with such a wonderful committed cast just means that the enjoyment far outweighs all the stress – especially when it all comes together so brilliantly at the end.”

During the interval the PFA served drinks and I got chatting to a few of the audience members who couldn’t wait to get back into the hall for the second half of the production. Raquel Baillie said, “I really am enjoying watching the production so much. It’s incredible to see such talent, and so young too.” The second act of the production was just as excellent as the first, so energetic and quite emotional too. One of my favourite scenes was “King Herod’s Song”, Connor Minney did an outstanding job of fulfilling the character of King Herod, and had much of the audience laughing.

I think that the 99.9…% of all audience members including myself can say that this is one of the best school productions we have ever seen and cannot wait to see what the school comes up with next year!

Mrs Porter on future productions: “We will definitely have future school productions but I think we’ll be looking to do something in a completely different style next year….watch this space!”