History Theatre / JosephAndTheAmazingTechnicolorDreamcoat

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

Was later followed up by Webber's other major biblical musical: ''Music/JesusChristSuperstar.''

** In a way, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah. Rachel is referred to but never mentioned by name, and is presumably dead before the action starts, as the song 'Joseph's Coat' heavily implies ('Joseph's mother, she was quite my favourite wife / Never really loved another all my life'). Meanwhile, Leah, another of Jacob's wives and the mother of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon and Dinah isn't even mentioned at all. Neither is Naphtali and Dan's mother Bilhah, nor Zilpah, the mother of Asher and Gad.

* AmbiguouslyGay: The butler and the baker who were thrown in jail for "doing their thing".

** Pharaoh is an ''Music/{{Elvis|Presley}} impersonator'' singing the rock-and-roll "Song of the King".

** Joseph's brothers sing "Benjamin [[Main/ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Calypso]]".
** Many productions include other anachronisms, such as the Ishmaelites paying for Joseph with a credit card, or having a slot machine on the set during "Grovel, Grovel".

* BriefAccentImitation: In the film, Joseph imitates the Butler's British accent when he says "you'll {{bu|ffySpeak}}ttle as you did before." Also, in "Song of the King", especially when played by Donny Osmond, Joseph imitates the Pharaoh's Elvis impersonation when he calls him "Mister Pharaoh Man".

* CrocodileTears: The brothers shed them during "One More Angel in Heaven".
* CrossCastRole: As written, the Narrator has no specific gender, and is played by a man in the 1973 Original London Cast recording (and by no less than Cleavon Little in a mid-'70s Broadway performance). However, the part is now always played by a woman to compensate for the fact that, otherwise, there are no prominent female roles and only one named female ''character'' (aforementioned Mrs. Potiphar) in the show.
* CrowdSong: "Go Go Go Joseph".

* DarkestHour: Joseph's time in prison, expressed through the deeply moving "Close Every Door".

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: From "Close Every Door": "Just give me a number, instead of a name" -- coupled with the references to the Children of Israel -- hark back to the treatment of death-camp inmates during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

** From the "Benjamin Calypso" we have Benjamin being "straighter than the tall palm tree/big bamboo" and "honest as coconuts".

*** Pharaoh's--later Joseph's--servants were even worse. Those women were wearing ''nets'' and had '''gold-embellished crotches'''.

* FemmeFatale: Mrs. Potiphar. "She was beautiful but evil", indeed--and clearly more evil than Potiphar, who is simply a hopelessly faithful husband to an obviously unfaithful wife.

** Also in ''Those Canaan Days, Benjamin and another brother struggle for several seconds to get Jacob out of his chair so he can join a kickline, then immediately put him back down.
** When ''Benjamin Calypso'' starts, Joseph punches his own knee in exasperation.
** During "Benjamin Calypso", Judah takes the narrator's cocktail and offers it to Joseph, but he refuses. She then reclaims her drink with a glare at Judah.

* HaveAGayOldTime: Those extravagant, elegant soirees,/The gayest the Bible has seen
* IAmGreatSong: Joseph's lines in ''Joseph's Coat (The Coat of Many Colors)'' are him talking about how great he looks in his coat and in ''Joseph's Dreams'' he's telling his brothers how he'll rule over them all.

--> "No one comes to dinner now/We'd only eat them anyhow."

* {{Introdump}}: "Jacob & Sons".

* LoinCloth: Part of Joseph's standard slave attire in Egypt, and also all he wears after [[ShamefulStrip Potifar's wife forces him out of the rest of his clothes]].

* MediumAwareness: A few of the lyrics suggest that the characters know they are in a show. For example, the Prologue has the narrator say that she will tell the story of Joseph since the audience are there for a couple of hours. The lyric, "We've read the book and you come out on top" also applies; some versions go on to reference the performance venue itself, saying, "We've been outside, and you're on the marquee."
** A lyric in Potiphar's song reminds audiences "it's all there in chapter 39 of Genesis."

* MetaphorIsMyMiddleName: Joseph's brothers in "Grovel, Grovel". "[[HypocriticalHumor Honesty's our middle name!]]"

* MoodWhiplash: "Benjamin Calypso", a cheery pseudo-Jamaican song which comes just seconds after Benjamin is framed for theft.
** Also in "One More Angel", where the brothers celebrate Joseph's "death" while their father's gone, then pretend to cry whenever he arrives.

** For that matter, the somewhat cheery, bouncy "Potiphar" segues immediately into the extremely dramatic, serious [[invoked]] TearJerker of "Close Every Door", which then leads into the above "Go Go Go Joseph".

-->''No one comes to dinner now.''\\
''We'd only eat them anyhow.''

* OrphanedEtymology: After Joseph talks about his dreams, the brothers declare that "the writing's on the wall". This is an expression derived from an episode in the book of Daniel, which takes place long after the events of the musical.

* OverlyLongGag: Pharaoh Elvis. First there is the Song of the King, which is followed by an encore of the Song of the King. Which is followed by a ''reprise'' of Song of the King. Which is followed by an ''encore of the '''reprise''''' of Song of the King. And every iteration is even more over the top and ridiculous than the last.
* PainfulRhyme: Full of them...
** "All these things you saw in your pajamas/Are a long range forecast for your farmers"
** "His astounding clothing took the biscuit/Quite the smoothest person in the district"
** "The greatest man since Noah/It only goes to show ya"
** "First the butler, trembling, took the floor/Nervously he spoke of what he saw"
*** Also RhymingWithItself: "And their father couldn't see the danger/He could not imagine any danger" and too many examples of "colors" to count in ''Joseph's Coat''.
** [[SeparatedByACommonLanguage The English language being what it is]], some of these rhymes are a quite bit less painful when sung with a British accent.

* ReadingAheadInTheScript: Go, go, go, Joseph, Fight till you drop/We've read the book, and you come out on top.

** "Joseph's Dreams" becomes "Joseph All The Time", as Joseph essentially reveals to his brothers that [[DreamingOfThingsToCome the dreams have just come true]].
* RecursiveCanon: The prisoners singing ''Go Go Joseph'' claim that they know Joseph will be fine because they've read [[Literature/BookOfGenesis the book]].

* StarsAreSouls: In "One More Angel in Heaven", Reuben lies to his father that Joseph's soul has become "one more star in the sky" after his "death by a goat".
* SungThroughMusical: Pretty much the only spoken line in the show is during "Song of the King", when Joseph tells Pharaoh, "I understood the one about the corn, but I couldn't quite get the one about the cows. So, could you give it to me one more time... [[BriefAccentImitation 'Mister Pharaoh Man'...]] please?"

* YouCantFightFate: The brothers try to make it so that Joseph's dreams won't come true... [[SelfFulfillingProphecy And oh, how they fail.]]

* ReadingAheadInTheScript: Go,go,go, Joseph, Fight till you drop/We've read the book, and you come out on top.

** In Benjamin's case it even gets a bit weirder: The musical mentions that at least part of Jacob's favoritism was due to Joseph being the son of Rachel, his favorite wife. Given that Benjamin was Joseph's full brother, and also the son of Rachel, it makes far less sense for the favoritism to affect him so blatantly (...although it was [[DeathByChildbirth Benjamin's birth that killed Rachel]]...). Some productions avert this by leaving Benjamin out of the kidnap scene and having him at Jacob's side during "One More Angel in Heaven".

* AdaptationExpansion: The initial production of ''Joseph'' was a school cantata that was '''fifteen minutes long'''. Needless to say, it's grown a fair bit since.

Really, ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'' (abbreviated as Joseph...Dreamcoat, Dreamcoat, J&tATD, etc. etc.) is simply that: Creator/AndrewLloydWebber's BreakthroughHit, his first written musical, with lyrics by his frequent collaborator Creator/TimRice, and based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors.

* EverythingsBetterWithCows: The '''[[http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joseph+and+the+amazing+technicolor+dreamcoat/song+of+the+king+seven+fat+cows_20625835.html Song Of The King And The Seven Fat Cows]]'''

* GenderNeutralNarrator: As written, the Narrator has no specific gender, and is played by a man in the 1973 Original London Cast recording (and by no less than Cleavon Little in a mid-'70s Broadway performance). However, the part is now always played by a woman to compensate for the fact that, otherwise, there are no prominent female roles and only one named female ''character'' (aforementioned Mrs. Potiphar) in the show.

* AnachronismStew: The show deliberately embraces and revels in this trope:

** "Greatest man since Noah/Only goes to show-ah"
** "First the butler, trembling took the floor/Nervously he spoke of what he saw"

* GenderNeutralNarrator: As written, the Narrator has no specific gender, and is played by a man in the 1973 Original London Cast recording. However, the part is now always played by a woman to compensate for the fact that, otherwise, there are no prominent female roles and only one named female ''character'' (aforementioned Mrs. Potiphar) in the show.

* ColorfulSong: "Jacob and Sons" includes a long list of colors that Joseph's coat is:

** Potiphar is introduced with the 1920s Charleston-style song "Potiphar", which references getting rich by investing... in pyramids.

** From the "Benjamin Calypso" we have Benjamin being "straighter than the tall palm tree/big bamboo" and "honest as coconuts". Could be a case of HaveAGayOldTime but, considering the rest of the show and the time period it was written in, it's more likely GettingCrapPastTheRadar.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Many productions, and certainly the film, do this in ''spades''. See AmbiguouslyGay, DoubleEntendre, and FanService above.

Really, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (abbreviated as Joseph...Dreamcoat, Dreamcoat, J&tATD, etc. etc.) is simply that: Creator/AndrewLloydWebber's BreakthroughHit, it's based on the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors.

** During "Benjamin Calypso", the Narrator offers a cocktail to Joseph, but he refuses.

** In Benjamin's case it even gets a bit weirder: The musical mentions that at least part of Jacob's favoritism was due to Joseph being the son of Rachel, his favorite wife. Given that Benjamin was Joseph's full brother, and also the son of Rachel, it makes far less sense for the favoritism to affect him so blatantly (...although it was [[DeathByChildbirth Benjamin's birth that killed Rachel]]...).

* AdaptationDistillation / CompressedAdaptation: While generally faithful to the Bible apart from the AnachronismStew, the musical streamlines the story here and there. Instead of Joseph escaping from Mrs. Potiphar's advances and her retaliating later with a FalseRapeAccusation, her husband barges in during the seduction attempt and blames Joseph in a NotWhatItLooksLike scenario. Later, the brothers' two separate trips to Egypt are condensed into one, and instead of multiple [[SecretTestOfCharacter Secret Tests of Character]], they face only the "cup in Benjamin's sack" incident. The musical also never mentions that Benjamin is the only other son of Joseph's mother, and therefore Jacob's second favorite, which means that a layer of meaning behind the "cup in the sack" test (i.e. will the brothers abandon Rachel's other son the way they did Joseph?) is lost.

* {{Yandere}}: A male example with Potiphar, who [[ForegoneConclusion predictably]] goes medieval on the wrong rear end.
-->''LETTING OUT A MIGHTY ROAR, POTIPHAR BURST THROUGH THE DOOR!''

*** Pharaoh's--later Joseph's--servants were even worse. Those women were wearing ''nets''.

* ListSong: Red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve and cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and gray and purple and white and pink and orange and blue.
** Reuben was the eldest of the children of Israel...