Jesus Christ Superstar
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London

Since first being taken on a school trip in the late 1970s, I’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar a dozen times. But the performance on Friday 14 August was not only unlike any previous production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1971 musical in my memory, but also, “in very many ways” (as Mary Magdalene sings in the show), a unique theatrical experience.

Outside the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, a temperature gun was aimed at my forehead. Core body warmth pronounced “perfect”, I checked the fit of the KN95 Three-Dimensional Protective Respirator, and walked slowly, two metres away from other masked customers, to the venue’s banked, tree-framed amphitheatre, where my seat had several empty spaces next to it in all directions. Each “support bubble or household group” must be separated; only 390 of the usual 1,256 tickets are sold.