Theatre reviews: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat | Snow White

This exhilarating version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat makes for a fun-packed Christmas show, writes Joyce McMillan

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat | Tristram Kenton

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Playhouse, Edinburgh ★★★★

Snow White, Macrobert, Stirling ★★★

Fifty-seven years, and counting. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first-ever show, commissioned as a 20-minute end-of-term musical for a boys’ school in London in 1967, is old enough to be a grandad now; and it’s not only one of the greatest music theatre hits in history, but the spark that ignited Rice and Lloyd-Webber’s breathtaking career as the writers of blockbuster musicals from Evita to The Phantom Of The Opera.

Yet somehow, endearingly, Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat still retains much of its original atmosphere as a glorious dressing-up-box of a show, as much fun to perform as it is to watch; and that makes this exhilarating version of the 2019 London production - now on tour around the UK - a perfect, fun-packed Christmas show for the Edinburgh Playhouse.

The show’s headline star is of course Donny Osmond, child star and teenage heartthrob of the 1960s and 70s, and now a 60-something showbiz phenomenon. Yet Osmond’s spectacular second-half appearance as the show’s Pharaoh-turned-Elvis impersonator - greeted with actual screams by some fans of a certain age - is only part of the appeal of an all-singing, all-dancing show that also features a terrific young cast playing Joseph’s younger brothers and other roles, a thoughtful and well-sung central performance from Adam Filipe as Joseph, and a fine and perkily humorous narrator from understudy Charley Warburton, after Christina Bianco was taken ill.

And at the heart of it all is that tremendously witty, youthful and playful Rice-Lloyd Webber score, self-consciously ranging in style from Texas hoe-down to Parisian chanson to high-powered Elvis-era rock and roll.

Donny Osmond as the Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat | Tristram Kenton

The story it tells, of course, has - or could have - its serious moments. In this festive version of the show, though, those moments are very brief interludes in the onward rush of fun, satire, dance and music, all driven by a fine and much-appreciated performance from John Rigby’s ten-piece band in the pit. And if Donny Osmond milks the relatively brief role of Pharaoh for all it’s worth - pausing to remind us all that when he played Joseph, back in the day, he did it in a tiny loincloth - well, that’s show business, at its joyful best; and exactly what the audience came for.

Snow White at the Macrobert | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

At the Macrobert in Stirling, meanwhile, director Julie Ellen and a spirited cast strive to maintain the spirit of Johnny McKnight’s long involvement with the venue by restaging, in his absence, one of his merry and outrageous “Stirling Stella” pantos, a mash-up of Snow White and The Sound Of Music so exuberantly daft that it forms a fine comic footnote to the acclaimed production of The Sound Of Music playing at Pitlochry this Christmas.

Truth to tell, Julie Ellen’s cast struggle a little with the sheer complexity of McKnight’s concept, as Chris Forbes tries to make sense of the idea of Maria von Trapp as a dame called Maria Shut-Yon-Trapp, and understudy Olivia Adams steps up to replace an unwell Giga Gray as a very young ghastly villainess.

After a slightly shapeless first half, though, the show begins to find its feet, propelled - like many of this year’s pantos - by a truly terrific performance from the young cast (as singing nuns, dancing cowgirls, and lost souls trapped in the magic mirror), and some fine work from Tinashe Wirakandwa as Snow White, and the ever-brilliant Helen McAlpine as her older sibling Swanky. And it ends with the best song-sheet of this year’s panto season, a rousing version of Doh A Deer brilliantly conducted by Forbes and McAlpine; and a final version of All I Want For Christmas so well sung and deftly choreographed that the audience can’t help but cheer the show to the echo, and head off happily into the winter night.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, until 29 December; Snow White is at the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, until 31 December.