Reviews

"Sha-la-la Joseph you're doing fine/ You and your dreamcoat ahead of your time", sing the chorus about the title character in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

But producer and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose earliest collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice this was, has always been one (or more) steps ahead of his time.

Then he and Rice premiered the show, not in the West End, but in a 15-minute schools' version in west London in 1968, only gradually expanding it into what it has become.

And now, in a reprise of the Palladium's 1991 Jason Donovan megamusical, Lloyd Webber has turned it into a star-making vehicle for the winner of the latest BBC reality TV series, Lee Mead, who was chosen not by a creative team but by public vote instead.

And so, one of the nation's all-time favourite musicals - thanks to endless school and touring productions - has been cleverly handed back to the public with its fate, much like The Sound of Music, becoming public property in every sense. 

pitch-perfect

Of course, Joseph's main job in this biblical oratorio that charts his journey from family outcast - sold into slavery by his 11 jealous brothers - to dream interpreter to the ruler of Egypt, is to look pretty in a loin cloth and sing sweetly.

Lee Mead: the coat fits!

On both scores, Lee Mead's dream-struck Joseph turns out to be appropriately dreamy.

With his lean, buffed-up torso atop chunky footballer's legs and a pretty face beneath an unruly mop of dark curly hair, he's picture-perfect.

And, with a resonant voice that's reminiscent of a young Michael Ball, he's pitch-perfect, too.

Though some of the show's jaunty charm is drowned by the sets and props that introduce some jokes of their own - a parade of Egyptian landmarks that includes a model of the London Eye beside the Sphinx - the unbridled joy and naïve delights of the score cannot be suppressed. 

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is at the Adelphi Theatre, Strand WC2. Tickets: £15 - £49.50. Box office: 0870 895 5598. Booking to 7 June 2008.