Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Rice/Lloyd-Webber - a fine choice for one's first musical.


We're currently four days into the run of Joseph at Reps and having fun.
The show, Directed by Teri Grimmell with Musical Direction by Paul Shephard has not been without its little quirks.  The 'flu bug that has got into the team is being valiantly fought off and, with the help of electronic amplification (Rob Hollands and team), even the dodgiest and most damaged voices can be made passable.

Joseph is an interesting show.
Modelled remarkably closely on the original Genesis account (chap 37 and 39 onwards), all sorts of fun little side lights have been lifted from the Scripture straight into the script.  Supplement these with a rock-n-roll Pharaoh, a French café symbolising the hardships of Canaan and a calypso Judah, and it's a rollicking good fun show.

But what does it say to Joe Public?

As written, there are two portrayals of the underlying philosophy Tim Rice wrote into the lyric.
In the show prologue the Narrator tells us:

We all dream a lot.
Some are lucky, some are not.
But if you think it, want it, dream it,
Then it's real.
You are what you feel.

But all that I say,
Can be told another way.
In the story of a boy who's dreams came true.
And he could be you.

In other words, you are what you dream - existential humanism for Everyman.

Then, after Joseph is elevated to "Pharaoh's number two", he tells us that "Anyone from anywhere can make it if he gets a lucky break! "

And it all seems so real.
Salvation by fate!  You are what you turn out to be.

And this is where I need to come back to the source.  It isn't just your dreams or your lucky breaks.  Who controls your life?  Who do you choose to serve with your life?
In Acts 7, Stephen tells us the story again.

And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.

(Emphasis mine)
Not luck.  Not dreams. God.
God was with him.

In his lifetime, Joseph was instrumental in saving many lives.  But that's all.  He was an instrument.  A willing tool in the Hands of the God who did not fail him in his time of horror.

To paraphrase

It's the story of a boy who's God is true.
And he could be you.

["Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" runs at Reps until Saturday 25th September.  Booking at the Spotlight]