Theater: In the Beginning

JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber Lyrics by Tim Rice

It is common nowadays to view the ’60s as a black decade, irretrievably scarred by war and violence. What sometimes is forgotten is that it was also a period of energy, exuberance and, occasionally, even joy. All of those qualities come together in this 1968 British musical, which began the careers of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and which is now being revived off Broadway. Originally written as a 25-minute work to be performed by children, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is now 90 minutes long, and the cast is definitely adult.

Joseph, of course, is one of the stars of the Book of Genesis, so favored by his doting father Jacob that his jealous brothers plot against him and sell him into slavery in Egypt. But Joseph has more comebacks than Richard Nixon, and soon he is Pharaoh’s deputy, the man who can read dreams and who keeps Egypt prospering through good years and bad. His triumph comes when his brothers, who have not shared his good fortunes, arrive begging for food. Joseph forgives them—this is the Bible, after all—and the curtain descends on a happy ending.

With such material, who could go wrong? Probably lots of people, but Webber and Rice are not among them. They have not aimed so high as they did in their later Jesus Christ Superstar or Evita, but compared with those hits Joseph is better rounded, more buoyant and totally unpretentious. Despite its several transformations and elongations, it retains the child like wonder that it must have had when it was performed by children.

Pharaoh (Tom Carder) is an Elvis Presley look-alike in a white suit and gold-and-white rhinestone-studded shoes. Joseph’s brothers put on cowboy hats and overalls for a country and western song in one scene, sombreros for a Mexican mariachi number in another. Joseph, played with spirit if not much conviction by Bill Hutton, is a blond beachboy in shorts and a cutoff shirt. Nothing is sacred, yet at the same time nothing is profaned. Webber and Rice have written a show merely to amuse and entertain, and they have succeeded.

—By Gerald Clarke