CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Any dream will NOT do - how do you interpret Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?
Maybe I’m an old curmudgeon, but I winced a little recently as I sat watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Eden Court Theatre.
Don’t get me wrong – Ness Entertainment’s production involving local talent was rollicking, rumbustious and joyful, bringing the whole community together.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical re-tells the ancient Jewish story. Joseph, his father’s favourite son, boasts about dreams which imply he’s superior to his brothers. Fed up with his arrogance, they beat him up, then sell him into slavery in Egypt, telling their father a wild animal has killed him.
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Years later, the brothers find themselves, during an intense famine in their homeland going to Egypt where grain is plentiful and where Joseph, whom they don’t recognise, is in charge of food distribution!
A show with a biblical theme! So why did I, as a Christian, wince? God, central to the original story gets little if any mention in the musical, which presents Joseph’s youthful dreams as creating his successful future rather than simply signposting it. His ability to interpret dreams is viewed as a superpower propelling him to the top, rather than the fruit of God-given insights.
But then I thought ‘wince not, John!’ Every generation retells the old stories to reflect the meaning it finds in them. We can understand a culture by the use it makes of the plotlines of the past. The musical is the fruit of a culture where many people have stopped believing in God, and seem to assume (in the words of the prologue) that ‘if you think it, want it, dream it then it’s real. You are what you feel.’
With this, Christians take issue. We see God as central to our personal stories, giving us skills, opportunities, and a potential we’re challenged to fulfil with joy and humility, becoming our very best selves in the process. Any dream will NOT do.
But there’s another reason for wincing - the climactic moment when Joseph reveals himself forgivingly to his brother seems trivialised in the musical.
Christians see in Joseph a foreshadowing of Jesus, who was rejected and killed by those unable to bear his dreams of a better society. People today come, like the brothers to Egypt, with a deep spiritual hunger, try many things, and then hear a different voice, offering not judgement, but hope and peace, and realise that this is none other than the once-rejected Jesus.
As the dreamcoat man revealed himself to his brothers in the words ‘I am Joseph’ so Jesus reveals himself to us in the famine-lands of post-modernity, inviting each of us to a spiritual banquet.
Remembering the day I heard in my heart the words ‘I am Jesus’ I know which interpretation of the story rings true for me.
