Synopsis
With Jesus locked in a cell, Mary and the apostles can see that everything they had hoped for has gone horribly wrong. They wish they could turn the clock back and start again.
Lyrics
Relevant Insights
“…for Superstar on stage, the only change we made from the album version was a straightforward addition of one new song for Mary Magdalene, i.e., Yvonne [Elliman]. On the record, her character disappears completely after half-time and this would not have been satisfactory when we had such a marvelous singer in the part and one who was becoming quite well known. The new number was in fact a duet between Mary and Peter, entitled ‘Could We Start Again Please’ […] This number turned out rather well.”
– Tim Rice
“There was one real plus [to the Broadway production, which Lloyd Webber otherwise disliked]: everyone agreed that we needed a new song for Mary Magdalene. She virtually disappears in the second half of the original album. So, Tim and I wrote a duet for Mary and Peter […] called ‘Could We Start Again, Please?’ It was great to hear it come alive.”
– Andrew Lloyd Webber
Alternate Lyrics (if any)
1992 20th-Anniversary Version
Tim Rice wrote additional lyrics for a pop version of the song recorded by Paul Nicholas and Claire Moore to promote the original London production’s 20th anniversary (and their concert tour – and tie-in cast recording – celebrating the same). It was not designed to be performed in character and was a bonus track outside the show’s context, both live and on the CD.
The added lyrics are as follows:
Much like its ubiquitous early Nineties adult contemporary arrangement, the added lyrics are no great shakes, and most fans dismiss them as cheesy. The odd JCS production has inserted them over the years, to no discernible profit (except, in my opinion, in one instance; see “My Two Cents” below), but they’ve never been an official part of the show.
1996 Revisions
In or around this production, “This is just a dream” became “This is all a dream” (italics for emphasis), and a lot of “So could we…” or “Oh could we…” became “Or could we…” in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. Nothing that materially alters the meaning.
Further Analysis
To state (at this point) the obvious, this song was not on the original concept album but was written for the Broadway production. In addition to making adequate use of the talent at hand, it came into being because of timing. As previously noted, the original album ran 87 minutes and 16 seconds, considered short by then-contemporary theater standards. Frank Corsaro, who was engaged to direct the production before a car accident landed Tom O’Horgan in the show’s driver’s seat (pardon the unfortunate pun), had discussed lengthening the score with Rice and Lloyd Webber, including restoring “What A Party,” expanding “Everything’s Alright” and the trial before Pilate sequence, adding “Hey Father” after “Hosanna,” and creating a lovely scene of gentility and respite amid the cruelty of Act II, which eventually became “Could We Start Again Please?” Of the requested changes, only the expansion of the trial and “Could We Start Again…” ever got written or made it to the final cut. (Unless you count my theory of “Hey Father” possibly sparking the content of Jesus’ later added verse in “Hosanna.”)
Dramatically speaking, “Could We Start Again Please?” is an intriguing moment in JCS. Although many directors, including Norman Jewison in the 1973 film, don’t appear to know how to stage it, it can be argued to serve a valid purpose.
Firstly, “Herod’s Song,” while a welcome relief from the heavy proceedings on the record (and in any production that otherwise follows the album slavishly, not allowing the audience a second to breathe), is too short a break onstage before we veer back into the drama with Judas’ suicide. The mood whiplash is intense without it.
Secondly, much like Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins and the addition of “Something Just Broke” (an apt comparison, as you’ll learn shortly), despite its frequent history of appearing on stage as a spectacular, over-the-top, eye-popping extravaganza, JCS, up to this point, has been – believe it or not – claustrophobic, an intimate drama concerning the mental machinations of a handful of people with occasional intrusions from the chorus, an enclosed world of frustration and exhaustion. What’s missing, especially on the album (though I’ll concede it’s less necessary there structurally), is a musical expression of the outside reality, the emotional impact of what has occurred on (virtually) bystanders with equally significant viewpoints.
Here, for just a moment, Peter and Mary express their desperation and confusion; they don’t understand how things got so out of hand, and they don’t comprehend why Jesus, at least in their perception, has taken things to such an extreme. They are, to quote another Lloyd Webber musical, twisted in every way, rife with emotional and intellectual contradictions, like Jesus himself and his movement: Mary says they’ve been both living to see him and also dying to see him, that they’ve been hopeful but also now pessimistic. Peter and Mary even echo Judas’ opinion that Jesus has gone too far, begging Jesus to stop all this – just as Judas had.
A lot of Act II has the feel of an I-told-you-so delivered on a matryoshka level, especially with the repeated melodic motifs, so the same standpoint coming from ardent followers with a completely new melody reinforces that overall point with added impact: he was right, it went wrong.
Old vs. New
- The old score opens with four bars of intro, with the sustained soft humming of a single note from the ensemble. (This can be heard at its most ethereal and haunting on the 1971 original Broadway cast recording, continuing throughout the number.) The new score reduces this to two bars, with no humming.
- The old score says that “drums play on D.S. only,” meaning they don’t enter until Mary repeats, “I’ve been living to see you…” at Bar 26 in the new score. The new one has no such indication.
- Bars 21-26 (coda in the old score): These are not present in the new score, where they would fall around or before Bar 44.