This is a beautiful book which brings the story of the musical and the music itself back to life. Accompanied with photos and behind the scene stories, it is a must for every JC Superstar fan.

Ellis Nassour provides a detailed look at the development of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. However, it is often too detailed, spending too much time on the development of the concept album rather than the musical. By the latter half of the book it is often repetitive as well. While there is interesting information to be found, it is often surrounded by the superfluous.

As a theater fan, I was looking forward to reading a lovely book about JCS and how it came to be the artistic masterpiece that it is. Perhaps I was really wanting this to be a gorgeous fangirl coffee table book. I did enjoy the production pictures and celeb quotes, but I wanted more of that. It was clear that the author has a passion for JCS, but it came off more like your old great uncle sipping on whisky at your third cousin's wedding and rambling incessantly about the good ole days with his accountant cronies. There was just so much name dropping, unnecessary description of people (I really didn't care if they were 5'11" or 6'1" or had a paunch or not), and random celebrity gossip that seemed out of place. Perhaps, I am just not the right audience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Globe Pequot, Applause for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Ok, so to be fair -- this ends up being a DNF at just over 50%. This is the rarest thing for me to ever do. Usually I only read book I think I'll be interested in, because there's so much out there. And in this case, I love musical theater (and JCS in particular) and really love BTS books about the making of things. But this one -- well unfortunately it's just poorly written. Bad grammar, bad sentence structure, etc. This made it very difficult for me to enjoy. I can't speak to the musical errors as other reviewers did, but the grammar teacher in me was very sad. Beyond that, it wasn't gripping or entertaining. It made ALW and JCS boring. And that's a crime.


And to be extra fair, I'm not going to post this review on Goodreads - because I'm not trying to hurt anyone or tank anything. But I promised an honest review here, so that's what I'm doing.

The books starts with backgrounds for Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice before they meet up to become collaborators. The story of Superstar being made into a studio album before it is ever staged is legendary in musical theater history. This book gives lots and lots of details from meetings to castings, protests, unauthorized staging and finally a finished product and eventual movie. It also includes some black and white photos. I did learn some things like the music came before the lyrics and issues then came during staging. Parts of the book seem gossipy. Do I need to know about invitations to Barbara Streisand's birthday parties where she doesn't interact with them? Other reviews have commented on incorrect musical terms. I’m a fan of the show and have seen in multiple times in various stagings.

At the request of the Drama, Choral Music, and Band Director, we are attempting to build up our high school library's dramatic and vocal arts collections. Thank goodness that through #NetGalley we had the opportunity to preview this work. While the title is promising, the incorrect usage of musical terms removed it from our to-be-purchased list. One has to wonder where the book editor was and if they were familiar with the terminology.

I was looking forward to reading about the inception and reception of JCS, a musical I first encountered through the concept album. But this book is so fraught with cringe-worthy incorrect uses of musical terms, inconsistencies and contradictions, and unsupported claims that it's painful to read. The prose is heavy-handed and gushing, the details often foggy, and the emphasis on certain subjects--Tim Rice's apparently endless pursuit of women, for example--is unbalancing and, to be honest, kind of creepy. While author Nassour had considerable and unique access with the creation of the show in a professional capacity, he comes across here like an uncritical fan in awe of Rice and Lloyd Webber. Musicians will be turned off by Nassour's egregious errors in writing about music, while fans will be frustrated with the poor overall writing and attempts to be dramatic, as well as the casual sexism. It's a shame, really, because the musical deserves better work on its history.