Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Tickets | Schedule for 2024/2025 Events

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a sung-through musical based on Joseph’s character from the Bible. It has music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. It was performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1972 and was the first musical by the duo to be performed publicly.

Also known as Joseph, the musical is widely performed by many schools and amateur theater groups. It is a family-friendly retelling of Joseph’s story from Genesis and has good music that attracts the audience. The musical was first presented as a 15-minute show in 1968 at the Colet Court School in London.

The success of Jesus Christ Superstar by Webber and Rice encouraged them to turn Joseph into a full-length musical (35 minutes). This version was performed at the film festival before opening at the West End in 1973. The musical entered Broadway in 1982. It had multiple revivals on Broadway and West End during the 1990s and 2000s.

More About Joseph, the Musical

The first act of the musical has ten songs, and the second has thirteen. The music composer and lyricist duo used a range of genres and musical styles for Joseph. In fact, they even included parodies of French ballads. Rock and roll, classical, country, and jazz were a few other styles. The prologue by the narrator was added to the Broadway version in 1982. A couple of other tracks were included during the tours.

The musical starts with the narrator introducing Joseph to the audience. He is presented as a dreamer who sings inspiring but meaningless songs. The focus then moves to his father, Jacob, and his twelve sons. Joseph is the most favored son, which makes the others jealous of him. The musical continues to present Joseph’s life story and ends with his brothers changing for the better and becoming good men. The last song gives a rough summary of the plot.

A few shows use Joseph Megamix (a mashup of all songs from the musical) as the last song that’s played when the actors bow to the audience at the end of their performance.

Joseph was adapted into a direct-to-video film in 1999 with Donny Osmond as the lead. The musical was nominated in several categories at the Tony Awards, Drama Desk Awards, and Laurence Olivier Awards.