The musical started as a rock opera concept album before its Broadway debut in 1971. The album arrived at a time when cassettes were becoming more and more popular across the world, making it easier for music to travel globally. Alyque Padamsee managed to get his hands on a recording when it came out and all the Theatre Group members sat in a room together and heard the entire album. They knew it was something special the moment they heard it.

AP was introduced to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ by his brother in law, Deryck Jefferies. He arranged for the recording to be played in the Gothic confines of the splendid Afghan Church in Colaba (South Bombay).

The play was performed at the Bombay Hospital’s undergroud Birla Auditorium. The auditorium had a huge giant cross lining the centre aisle and across the seats of the theatre, Which would be over 150 feet long, which then became the stage for the entire play. They had to adapt the seating plan, so the actors had to go through the audience each time. This was the first time that Theatre Group had people waiting in queues at the box office and it ran successful shows for an entire year and became Theatre Group’s most popular production till Evita four years later.

One of AP’s most spectacular plays, despite a lot of opposition from the Church back then.

In rehearsals, Gerson, who was playing Pilate, messed up in counting 39 lashes and counted only 38, so Joe Alvares, another cast member came up to him and jokingly asked him if he knew how to count.

Farrokh Mehta was AP’s initial pick to play Herod, but due to the character’s requirement to sing and Farrokh not being a natural at it, he was replaced by Keith Stevenson.

Coincidentally, AP’s former wife, Pearl, was at that very time preparing another musical, ‘Godspell’, which also was on the life of Jesus. As it turned out, Pearl’s production was quicker off the mark than AP’s, and to her fell the distinction of producing Bombay’s first full-blown musical, with a live band.

AP was very keen to cast Sharon Prabhakar as Mary Magdalene, which is the leading female role in ‘Superstar’. Unfortunately, at that time she was flying for Air India, and couldn’t make all the shows due to her schedule. It took the production three months, before they could find the next right Mary Magdalene in Poornima Bhende, who also happened to be the sister of Nandu Bhende, who played the character of Judas in the play.

Gerson played the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate who reluctantly sends Jesus to be crucified after memorably washing his hands of the case. Alyque used colour and lighting to make the water red like blood in the judgement scene. It was a magnificent musical which Alyque did with two hand-held microphones and four musicians. It was better than the full-scale orchestra and elaborate sound equipment that the West End could afford. 

When the play finally opened at the Birla, there were hordes of people queuing up to buy tickets. Never before were seen such crowds outside the box office, except perhaps for Tughlaq, where fans queued up to see Kabir Bedi in the ‘nude’.