Musical: Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat

2:47pm Wednesday 25th July 2007

AS a devout viewer of the BBC's Any Dream Will Do talent competition to find the West End's next Joseph, and a Lee Mead supporter from the outset, I shared the over-excitement of Adelphi Theatre-filling audience.

Lee's first appearance on stage was met with warm cheers; it's great to see an audience responding so enthusiastically to a show and a leading man.

In this slight reworking of the well-known musical, spectacle and full-on farce ensues from the start; a parade of brightly-dyed sheep float by on a conveyor belt, the Brothers as an all-singing, all-dancing ensemble celebrate Joseph's 'death' until Jacob returns and they immediately switch to solemnity and the Potiphar's wife debacle - where she attempts to seduce Joseph - is a kinky but silly slice of excess.

As well as their Jacob & Sons and Joseph's Coat moments, the Brothers are also a great comic force for Those Canaan Days; here delivered in a style seemingly poking fun at French miserablists such as Edith Piaf.

Hamming it up as an Elvis-impersonating Pharaoh was the superb Dean Collinson. Obviously determined not be upstaged by the talent-show-winning Mead, he dropped puns as quickly as Priestley gained pounds and gave his rhinestone trousers the workout their original owner clearly could have done with.

Although he did have his moments, as the snake pit scene proved, and he was certainly a naturally commanding stage presence, Lee is not the most natural comic. Luckily then, his voice was strong, sturdy and sweet and his rendition of Close Every Door was just gorgeous. All this shows it's the truly great songs which make Joseph.

They're filled to the brim with humour, are touching and, most importantly, unforgettable - I'm still singing along in my head days later.

With jaunty lyrics such as "find a man to lead you through the famine with a flair for economic planning," keeping the humour topped up throughout, you'll be grinning all the way through. There are even gags when Joseph's down on his luck and banged up in jail.

Also getting in on some of the best songs (Poor, Poor Joseph and Go, Go, Go Joseph) is narrator Preeya Kalidas, who has a confident voice. Shame she was not as confident, or as stable, on her lofty heels. The feeling she could topple off the stage at any moment was never far away.

It's clear Lee is the one attracting the audiences but it will be the package as a whole which sends them away with the feeling they've witnessed the finest the West End has to offer.

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