Way, way back many centuries ago, a long time before coronavirus began a visit to the theatre might not have been worthy of a column. But after a year in the dark, I was privileged the other week to see the world of live entertainment roar back into life — wearing a glorious technicolor dreamcoat.
Extra fitting, indeed, that my first Covid theatre excursion would be to see Joseph: that most Jewish of musicals. The circumstances were certainly unique. Our performance was in preview week, when be-masked faces and social distancing were still required (you sat with your ‘bubble’ in a half-full theatre). “Scenes we may never see again”, I thought to myself, turning my camera to the audience.
Joseph has always had a special place in my heart — in fact, it turns out that the show is as old as I am. The first Tim Rice/ Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly, in 1968 it ran first at St Paul’s junior school in London, then as an amateur production in the States two years later. After a stint at the Edinburgh festival, it opened in the West End in 1973,
My parents first took me to see it in the late 70s, a good 15 years before the ‘celebrity Josephs’ of Philip Schofield and Jason Donovan (who pops up in this one as a camp Pharoah). ‘My’ Joseph was the actor Jess Conrad, who originated the West End role. My pre-teen self promptly fell in love with Jess’s toned physique, thick dark hair and very white teeth. I wrote “JC 4 ML” on my school exercise books and cut out pictures from the programme to stick on my wall.
JC must have played the role for some time, because I dragged three school friends along to see him in 1980, when we were 12. We hung around doggedly at the stage door afterwards for a glimpse of that hair and that smile. In my later teens, it was more about Duran Duran/ Spandau/Simon le Bon and the Kemp brothers, but I still loved One More Angel in Heaven, and all those other wonderful songs.
Joseph accompanied me on Israel tour in 1985, when I was 17. Part of the experience was ten days ‘working’ on Kibbutz Revevim, in the Negev desert. I was stationed in the factory that made parts for machines that fed chickens; my job was to examine a mountain of tiny plastic parts to make sure they were perfect. When my mountain was sorted, another was poured out on to my table. It was endless, mind-sapping monotony. I kept sane by singing Joseph end to end — every single word of it — about five times a day. I remembered Jess Conrad, and smiled.
One of my companions on JC night was my schoolfriend Denise. And the experience clearly stayed with her, too: she’s the one who booked the tickets for tonight’s show.
Sitting in the glorious Palladium is thrill enough. But — oh! the collective joy when the curtain rises. Live music! Performers! Children in fake beards! Alexandra Burke made a feisty narrator/Jacob, and even if Jason Donovan was slightly underwhelming as Pharoah, it didn’t really matter: it’s the songs that are the stars.
I was just belting out “Children of Israel are never alone/ We have been pro-o-mised/ A land of our own” when I pulled up short. Joseph in the age of anti-Israel marches and pro-Palestinian politics? Later, I rang the producers to ask whether there had been any fuss over this: wisely, they refused to answer.
A quick Google revealed there had been recent attempts to ‘wokify’ Joseph: in 2017 a group of schools in New Zealand had changed the words to “children of kindness”. Sir Tim Rice sent them a rocket over Twitter. “Permission not given”, he wrote, later adding: “They interpreted the song completely wrongly, and what a rotten thing.
“I thought the point of teaching was to teach children to cope with hard things in life. This was moronic. Joseph is an innocent story straight from the Bible and these people in New Zealand thought we were making statements about Israel and Palestine — bonkers.” The New Zealanders apologised and reinstituted the original words.
In the end, Joseph is about colour, light, redemption, and some bloody good tunes. ‘But if my analysis of the position is right/ At the end of the tunnel is a glimmer of light,’ sang the narrator to a barely post-Covid audience.
Altogether now: any dream will doooo.
The Insomnia Diaries: How I Learned To Sleep Again (Octopus) by Miranda Levy, is out now