Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Liverpool - By Marjorie Bates Murphy for The Stage

Bill Kenwright presents and directs Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph in an all new show filled with humour and fresh business - such as inflatable sheep rising out of the hillside and Joseph appearing as an angel after his 'death' gesturing that he is still here.

Stephen Gately, previously of Boyzone, in his stage debut has a vocal strength and range to play brash young Joseph on the brink of manhood. Gately is a big star with charm and appeal.

On either side of the stage the split choir is from the Elliott-Clark School Liverpool. Vivienne Carlyle moves through the action as the Narrator, surrounded by Jacob's leaping sons who perform the musical numbers with unbelievable energy.

click for more

Nice and cozy don't quite do it
By Ian Johns for The Times


WHEN a boyband member goes solo, it is usually an attempt to distance himself from the embarrassing frivolity of a teenybop past. But Stephen Gately, still dubbed “the cute one from Boyzone”, seems content to keep it nice and cosy by starring in this revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first collaboration.

Nice and cosy is certainly what is required for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which began life as a 20-minute piece for a school concert in 1968. Despite being expanded in the 1970s to become a touring stalwart for the producer Bill Kenwright, and given a high-tech West End makeover by Stephen Pimlott in 1991 starring Jason Donovan, it retains its classroom innocence. Eminem in the title role wouldn’t really work.

click for more

************************************************

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Who would have expected to have such fun with Joseph?
By Paul Taylor for The Independent

I hadn't expected to have such a fabulously fun time. For a start, I was gibbering with jet-lag after a flight from New York. Then again, I was cross because I couldn't persuade any of my children to accompany me.

They had seen the kind of amateur version of this first hit by the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice partnership that is four parts enthusiasm to one part theatrical competence and they had been thoroughly put off. "It's a show that's better to be in than watch," declared my eldest daughter sagely, which reminded her father of Noel Coward's remark that television is a medium to appear on rather than to look on.

click for more

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
By Lyn Gardner for The Guardian

Camper than a Christmas tree and fonder of gold lame than Lily Savage, Bill Kenwright's revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is full of bare-faced cheek and a highly developed sense of fun. Having previously encountered only primary-school versions (where gold lame and pop-up sheep tend to be in short supply), I never realised quite how camp this retelling of the Sunday-school Bible story is. But here it is, from the purple sunsets to Rice's purple poetry, and enormously enjoyable it is, too. Sometimes it is Cecil B DeMille on the cheap, sometimes pure Liberace. When Stephen Gately's "poor, poor Joseph" is imprisoned and sings, "Do what you want with me", it sounds more like an invitation than a lament. Maybe it is the way those beefy jailers are waving the chains around.

click for more

*************************************************

A still amazing Dreamcoat
Charles Spencer for The Daily Telegraph reviews Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the New London Theatre.



Rarely can such a huge, money-spinning success have started with such modest ambitions. Though Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber already had their eye on the West End in 1968, the West End didn't have its eye on them, so they wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for an end-of-term performance at a London prep school.

The pop critic Derek Jewel had a child at Colet Court, and, when the 25-minute show transferred for a one-off performance at the Central Hall, Westminster, he gave it a rave review in the national press. Prep school drama teachers must have been dreaming of such a break ever since.

click for more

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
By John Martland from The Stage


Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's first collaboration has undergone many changes since its original amateur production back in 1968 but it is doubtful whether the perfect family musical has ever sounded or looked better than in this current version, which is produced and directed by Bill Kenwright.

The likeable score, with its blend of gospel, jazz, calypso, rock'n'roll, country, French chanson – complete with black berets and onions – and goodness knows what else, is as fresh as ever.

click for more