JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT
Make that the former epitome: it’s been knocked off its pedestal by Osmond’s latest effort. As the star of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Old Testament-inspired musical, Osmond has found the perfect vehicle: cheerful, glossy, fast-paced, and empty.
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Designer Mark Thompson has created an impressive and flexible set, including a huge pharaonic visage with negroid features and bright blue eyes that shoots out giant corncobs like a slot machine. It’s augmented by whimsical toy sheep, goats, snakes, and buzzards and a fairly spectacular array of costumes ranging from traditional desert garb to the Carnaby Street mod fashions in style when Joseph was first performed almost 30 years ago. This eclecticism far outdoes the “variety” of the score, which makes token use of calypso, country-western, French chanson, English music-hall, and a lengthy burst of late-70s disco for the protracted curtain calls but is most secure when it sticks to the bland bombast that has made Lloyd Webber an outrageous fortune. These soupy, craftily commercial melodies are especially well suited to Osmond’s supple, shallow singing. At 35, he proves you’re never too old for bubble gum.
