🎭 “Jesus Christ Superstar”
📅 Saturday, May 2-Sunday, May 17, 2026
📍 5th Avenue Theatre
📰 Click here for more info
🎭 “The Phantom of the Opera”
📅 Wednesday, May 13-Sunday, May 24, 2026
📍 Paramount Theatre
📰 Click here for more info
Kneel before me, May. [I take a big-ass sword and tap one shoulder, then the other.] I now dub thee Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Month. [I drop the sword because it’s far too large and inappropriate for knighting ceremonies.]
Yes! It’s Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Month in Seattle. And if you time it right, you can see two of his greatest musicals in the same day, only a scant few blocks away from each other.
Up first is “Jesus Christ Superstar,” my favorite of his OG works. (His more modern output? I’ve been banging the “Sunset Boulevard” drum long before Jamie Lloyd and Nicole Scherzinger got their hands on it). Only his second full-length musical, Sir Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice take the last days of Jesus Christ and wonder, “What if it f*cking rocked??”
From the iconic opening guitar riff of “Heaven on Their Minds” (the hypest sh*t ALW ever composed) to the searing and furious climactic title track, “JCS” is banger after banger, featuring the most human depiction of Jesus this side of a Scorsese film.
For the production at the 5th Avenue, Alex Killian (“Spring Awakening”) comes in as the Lord, while local rock legends Cameron Miles Lavi-Jones (King Youngblood) and Molly Sides (Thunderpussy) flank him as narrator Judas and benevolent Mary. It’s gonna slay.
Meanwhile, let’s trade religious musings for the ravings of a lovestruck madman with a mask, a pen and a vendetta. It’s “The Phantom of the Opera” (lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stillgoe), whose classic staging is touring through the Paramount.
The 1986 musical, the longest-running Broadway show of all time at 13,981 performances, works not just because of its swooning romance — the love triangle between the Phantom, ingenue Christine Daaé and opera patron Raoul is a big lesson in never needing a man — nor its extravagant and tactile design; it’s also a hoot and a half, a shameless work of high camp with soaring melodies, goofy comic relief and incredibly clear archetypes. (During one weekday matinee’s intermission in New York, I overheard a thickly accented Jersey dude in a baseball cap exclaim, “That’s my boy Phantom, singing his heart out!”)
It’s a cliché to love Phantom, but goddamn is it fun.
