Benjamin
Charles Maydon
Review
Production:
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Director: Bill
Kenwright
Date: 20
September – 2 October 2004, Theatre Royal, Nottingham
[From Platform (Nottingham Trent University
newspaper), Sessions section, Volume 1 Issue 2, October 4 2004]
This production of Joseph is directed by Bill Kenwright,
whose production is claimed to have picked up the ball from where Tim Rice and
Andrew Lloyd Webber left their musical, and run with it. High praise indeed.
Thankfully the characters are
played by a cast of unknowns, so there are no overbillings or massive cheers,
meaning we can actually concentrate on who we’re supposed to be seeing.
Unfortunately, given most of the characters, I’d rather not. They’re not bad by
any means, but they lack the certain spark that has been seen in other Joseph productions. The narrator sings
her part well, but with very little movement or life to her character, not
really connecting with the audience. Jacob and the brothers don’t actually do
much either; given the majority of the brothers’ parts, only a few little
novelties were pulled off – and, in fact, the brothers’ numbers, weak songs as
they are, were simply rushed through, as if the cast wanted them over and done
with.
That being said, this
production has its strong points. Pharaoh (thankfully) is amazing, his
performance being absolutely perfect for the character, resulting in nothing
less than a standing ovation from the entire audience, and an encore, of
course. Joseph himself starts off quite weakly, but as the musical progresses,
the actor’s confidence begins to grow, and so does his voice. And the orchestra
comprises of a mere six players, so pulling off an entire rock opera is quite a
feat.
But although a good time was
had by all, this Joseph left me
feeling just a little disappointed. We had given all our applause – yes, it was
a good night out – but after the encore took us through basically the entire
musical again, I, for one, felt as if they had milked this quite enough. And after
all that, we still got Joseph shouting, “do you want us to do it again?”
No,
Joseph, we do not.
Text & Site © Benjamin Charles Maydon
2011