In what is admittedly something of a disproportionate response they sell him into slavery and fake his death, but as usual Joseph lands on his feet, and despite his personality becomes an instant favourite with his new master, Potiphar. So he bangs his wife*.
He ends up in jail, but not for long because his dream-interpreting skills are required by the Pharaoh, and when he predicts 7 years of plenty followed by 7 of famine he somehow convinces everyone to put him in charge of Egypt’s finances, by which logic the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be Mystic Meg. When the famine comes Joseph’s brothers, now dying of starvation, come to him for help, which he does, but he also trolls them by framing one of them for theft, partly to find out if they’ve grown as people in the intervening years but largely for his own amusement. Then his reward for mainly having been in the right place at the right time all his life is to spend the rest of it riding around triumphantly covered in bling, while everyone else’s reward is that they get to watch and be grateful. Sometimes it’s hard to see how people can square claiming to follow the Bible's messages with also being massively right-wing, and then other times it’s easy.
This being right at the start of Lloyd Webber’s career it sees the millionaire supervillain actually use more than two tunes per show, and the evening is mainly made up of pastiches of different musical styles; its appeal to kids is obvious, but part of its appeal to adults is the endearingly bonkers way these musical styles are haphazardly thrown at the story – like Joseph’s brothers going from inexplicably French to inexplicably West Indian between “Those Canaan Days” and “Benjamin Calypso.” I’m not sure I would have approached Joseph with the overwhelming thought of “but what if it was more cheesy?” but that does seem to be where Connor’s coming from with his production – perhaps nodding back to the show’s original aim of being performed in schools, it takes the children’s chorus that’s long been a feature of the show and expands its role – the kids now mingle with the adult actors in fake beards, swelling the numbers of the brothers and playing various other incidental characters.
But nowhere is the cheese dialled up more than in the show’s lead – not Joseph, obviously, as both the poster and the curtain call hierarchy make clear, but the Narrator. After a few years away from the stage with well-publicised technical difficulties, Sheridan Smith returns for what on paper seemed like easing back into things as the Narrator. In fact Connor has made this by far the biggest role of the night, as Smith’s version of the Narrator also jumps into a number of other parts: Notably Jacob, Potiphar’s Wife and the Jailer. These are parts the Narrator actually shares songs with, meaning Smith is regularly jumping between characters mid-line (not always successfully, if Jacob suddenly starting to narrate the story is anything to go by.) I can see the idea behind this twist but in practice it’s too much – the usually very likeable Smith here becomes so ubiquitous you wish someone else would get a chance to do anything without her barging in front of them - Sheridan and the Amazing Ever-Expanding Role.
Also above Joseph in the cast hierarchy is Pharaoh – truth be told I could probably have lived without seeing this production but I do like it when my theatregoing has a kind of symmetry to it, and I saw Jason Donovan play Joseph at the Palladium in 1991: So his return to a different production at the same theatre, to play this scene stealing, Elvis-pastiche cameo role, seemed reason enough to give Joseph another go. As for Joseph himself, the producers are hoping for a Stemp of their very own in recent drama school graduate Jac Yarrow, who’s certainly a great singer and hugely enthusiastic, in a slightly terrifying way. If he doesn’t display the charisma of a Charlie Stemp he’s probably not helped by a character who’s bland at best, smugly obnoxious at worst; it’s something that’s even lampshaded by Richard Carson’s Reuben when he struggles to think of any positive qualities Joseph actually stood for in “One More Angel in Heaven.” (Michael Pickering as Simeon, who takes the lead on “Those Canaan Days,” is the only other adult cast member credited as anything other than a generic “brother” or “wife.”)
Morgan Large’s designs are as garish as the story requires but actually the staging is kept comparatively simple, as this is ultimately an incredibly big-budget panto – except even in a panto the dame usually gets off the stage and lets someone else have a go. I usually like Sheridan Smith but Connor’s given her much too free rein and the non-stop winking, gurning and chuckling gets old very quickly, never mind a solid two hours of it; if you’re not a fan of hers this must be downright torture. Jan didn’t actually know who she was‡ and his eventual opinion was that she was basically Bruce Forsyth inserting himself into a Generation Game challenge.
Also Joseph has a colourful coat for about five minutes but apart from the whole show being named after it it’s got remarkably little to do with anything.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice is booking until the 8th of September at the London Palladium.
Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.
*not, technically, what happens in the script, but it's pretty much how this production plays it
‡Actual conversation:
Me: ”Sheridan Smith plays the Narrator.”
Jan: “I don’t know who he is.”
I find this delightful mainly because Jan assuming Sheridan must be a boy’s name implies that he lives in the Keeping Up Appearances universe. Which he does.
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