["Jesus Christ Superstar"] is so stunningly effective a theatrical experience that I am still finding it difficult to compose my thoughts about it. It is, in short, a triumph….

["Jesus Christ Superstar"] considers the seven last days of Christ in contemporary pop terms and, it must be added, with complete reverence.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's score is vibrant, richly varied and always dramatically right and … much the same things can be said for Tim Rice's lyrics….

The story in itself is, of course, almost unbearably moving, but the great accomplishment of Webber and Rice has been to make it so strikingly immediate.

Douglas Watt, "'Jesus Christ Superstar' Is Full of Life, Vibrant with Reverence," in Daily News (© 1971, New York News Inc.; reprinted by permission), October 13, 1971 (and reprinted in New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, Vol. XXXII, No. 15, October 11-18, 1971, p. 242).