Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat is, like their 1971 Broadway hit Jesus Christ Superstar, a rock
rendition of a tale from the Bible. Framed through the prism of a pop sensibility, these
ancient sagas are rendered with the style and sound of the late sixties/early seventies,
giving them a contemporary, hip veneer.
Whereas Superstar adapts the New Testament, Dreamcoat is derived from Genesis, the
very first book in the Old Testament. Joseph (Chris McCarrell) is the favorite of his
father Jacob’s (Peter Allen Vogt) dozen sons in Canaan, land of the Biblical Jews. A
clever young man, Joseph has the gift to interpret dreams – yet, somehow, he can’t
foresee that his envious siblings will turn on him. The betrayal of his brothers causes
Joseph to end up in Egypt, where his interpretation of the Pharoah’s (Daniel Dawson)
dreams leads to his being appointed as the Egyptian monarch’s righthand man.
I’d guestimate that only around 10 percent of this production is actually derivative of the