Superstar builds to considerable impact and evocativeness, in part because it manages to wear its underlying seriousness lightly. What Rice and Webber have created is a modern-day passion play that may enrage the devout but ought to intrigue and perhaps inspire the agnostic young….

Together they have fashioned a clever, youthful blend of skepticism and romantic questioning….

Judas has rarely been treated so sympathetically as he is by Webber and Rice. According to the Judas of Superstar, his friend Jesus is a charismatic mortal—much like an adored rock singer or the leader of a radical movement—who has begun to believe in his own press clippings…. The Crucifixion is seen as the result of bungling self-indulgence, and Jesus' faith in his divinity, and hope of Resurrection, as delusions.

To a large extent, Webber and Rice share Judas' doubts…. Shorn of the Resurrection, of course, the Passion and...