Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was the second musical theatre show written by the team of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice (the first was The Likes of Us, a musical written in 1965, which only received its first stage performance in 2005).

Based on the "Coat of many colours" story of Joseph from the Bible, this light-hearted show was first presented as a fifteen-minute pop cantata at the Colet Court school in London on March 1, 1968. The piece was commissioned by Alan Doggett, head of the school's Music department, for their annual spring concert. Doggett conducted the performance, whose orchestra and the singers consisted of pupils of Colet Court.

The production did not have a huge impact when it premièred at the Colet Court, but Lloyd Webber's father, William, felt it had the seeds of greatness. He encouraged and arranged for a second performance to take place at his church, Westminster Central Hall, with a revised and expanded format, including a rock group. The boys of Colet Court (St. Paul's Preparatory School) sang at the second performance, conducted by Doggett on 12 May 1968. This performance received positive reviews as a new pop oratorio in London's Sunday Times. Following the second performance, Novello agreed to publish the work and it was also to be recorded by Decca Records. The third performance took place at St Paul's Cathedral on 9 November 1968. By then it had been expanded to 35 minutes and included several new songs. During this period, David Daltrey (front man of British psychedelic band Tales of Justine) played the role of Joseph.

In 1970, Lloyd Webber and Rice used the popularity of their second rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, to promote Joseph, which was advertised in America as a sequel to Superstar. The plan of riding on Jesus' coattails proved profitable for this "Technicolor coat" — the US Decca recording topped America's charts for three months.

In September 1972, Joseph was presented at the Edinburgh Festival, directed by Frank Dunlop and starring Gary Bond. A month later the production played at London's Young Vic and the Roundhouse theatres. It was preceded by an act of medieval mystery plays that lead to the "Coat of Many Colors".

On February 17, 1973, another Edinburgh production was mounted by Michael White and Robert Stigwood at the Albery Theatre. This production was accompanied by a piece called Jacob's Journey, which contained music and lyrics by Lloyd Webber and Rice, with a book by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. Jacob's Journey, which contained a great deal of spoken dialogue, was eventually phased out in favor of the through-sung score of Joseph. The first production of the show in its modern, final form was at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester.

Its American journey to Broadway is almost as storied. The first American production was in May of 1970 at the College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, New York. Despite great interest from colleges and amateur groups, as well as two professional productions in New York, it wasn't produced on Broadway until 27 January 1982 at the Royale Theatre where it remained for 749 performances.

Credited to its family friendly storyline, universal themes, and catchy music Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is one of the most dependably profitable titles in musical theatre history, particularly when producers feature a headlining star. It is often successfully mounted by amateur groups, and according to the Really Useful Group, it has been mounted by over 20,000 local schools and amateur theatres.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat would be the subject of BBC One’s second search for a West End star, channel controller Peter Fincham announced". after the success of 2006's BBC/Lloyd Webber Saturday evening prime-time talent show series, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?, in which viewers had voted for Connie Fisher as a new West End leading musical theatre actor to play the part of Maria von Trapp in Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium revival that year of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music — this format was adapted for US television in NBC’s 2007 series Grease: You're the One that I Want!

Introduced by Graham Norton and with the participation of Lloyd Webber, Doctor Who, Torchwood and musical theatre star John Barrowman, West End and Broadway lead Denise Van Outen and impresario Bill Kenwright, the prime-time Saturday evening series,Any Dream Will Do!, sought a new leading man for a revival of the late Steven Pimlott's 1991 London Palladium production of "Joseph". More than 3 million viewers' votes were cast during the 9 June 2007 series final and, said Norton on air, they made 25-year-old West End understudy Lee Mead “officially the people’s Joseph".