I must confess to never having seen Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, nor Jesus Christ Superstar, nor Hair. Never having been a hippy was maybe one reason, although I did have some trousers of many colours, if that counts.

It was perhaps those three shows, more than anything, that opened the way to the new, blockbuster musicals that have dominated the West End and Broadway ever since. Without them we would have had no Evita, no Les Mis, no Miss Saigon, no Phantom of the Opera et al. The aforementioned were all about peace and love and letting the sun shine in. Laudable sentiments but ones very much rooted in the long gone Age of Aquarius. As with many things, to be successful you didn’t have to be good; being new, and in these cases, very colourful, was enough.

Sitting through Joseph at the Everyman last night it was difficult to believe that the same pens that had written this went on to write Evita, Cats, Phantom etc. True, there are some very catchy tunes, tunes mark you, not songs. Some of the lyrics were mind-bogglingly bad. I particularly relished the couplet,

The dream you had in your pyjamas,

Was a warning to the farmers.

I bet you won’t find that in many rhyming dictionaries. To me the whole thing was a bit daft, but maybe I missed the point. At the end somebody turned to me and said, “Well that was fun, wasn’t it.” The problem for me was that for a lot of the time it seemed to be taking itself quite seriously and for the rest of it, taking the piss. If you are going to do tongue in cheek the tongue must be very visible in the cheek at all times. For a lot of this show I was not sure what was going on in their mouths. That said, I really quite enjoyed the Elvis Pharaoh and the bit set in Paris, but what that had to do with Joseph, Genesis (no, not the band) and ancient Egypt I didn’t even try to work out. But I suppose it was all part of the fun.

On the plus side, I thought Rebekah Lowings was excellent as the Narrator, replacing the errant Marcus Collins. For me the best thing was Matt Lapinskas as the above-mentioned Elvis backed by a team of Egyptian dogs cum American footballers, but after the dreadful (apart from the self-inflating sheep – least said about those the better) first half I was grateful to have anything to smile at. There was also some very spectacular lighting, although I thought the set was boringly symmetrical and the production and choreography were rather amateurish.

It can be a tricky business being a theatre critic. What do you say when a show has been successful for forty years, who are you to criticize it? For me, the fact that Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat started life as a bit of amateur fun for a school production explains everything. However, the audience seemed to love it, so what do I know? ★★★☆☆  Michael Hasted   05/02/15