Of course, I'm now listening to the whole thing again. Last time I heard the music (watched the DVD a week ago) the songs were stuck in my head for five whole days. While I love the music to death, this was a little much. However, I'm happily listening to it again now. Why? Because it's really an incredible work of magic:
These people singing are so good, they can get so much powerful, subtle emotions into their voices, it makes my chest hurt. Ache. Feeling the emotion with them. Just from them singing! It's amazing. I don't hardly sing at all; after listening to as song a ton of times, I can get most of the notes right, but how in the world do you get the intense emotion into it? Listening to the songs, you can hear-- no, *feel* the love Judas has for Jesus. It's so painful because you know it's not returned with anything but, at the most and when Judas is lucky, friendship.
I wish there was a community of fanfic writes for JCS as big as there is for HP. There's no need to look for the slash subtext here! And the story is so sad and beautiful and tragic and wonderful... And the characters are so human: A flawed Jesus; a loving Judas who makes a bad choice; human friends who are weak beings and sometimes put themselves before their friendships. Or physical details: A blond, beautiful Jesus; a dark, not handsome Judas; a beautiful woman with a past; a bunch of interesting looking minor characters with lots of backstories.
Oh, that last paragraph was probably poorly written. Hard to write and listen to music! I have no idea how people RP with music on.
Wow, I so love a bunch of men singing together... Okay, time to end this, more listening to do!
Edited to add: Pictures!
Jesus (Glenn Carter)
http://www.glenncarter.com/homepage.jpg
http://www.glenncarter.com/images/glenntony.jpg
Judas (Jerome Pradon)
http://www.musicalstages.co.uk/images/pradon.gif (large)
Minor characters:
http://www.jcs.pair.com/videopics.htm
Sheesh, there needs to be a lot more Judas/Jerome Pradon screenshots out there! I might have to make some this weekend. Mmm.