Andrew Lloyd Webber Eyes Reality Show Format to Cast Revival of Joseph...

Will the next reality television casting show focus on Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? That is indeed the plan, Lloyd Webber revealed to Theatre.com. The composer serves as the producer of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium, whose leading lady, Connie Fisher, was cast by the popular BBC TV series How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?

“I'd like to do Joseph this way,” Lloyd Webber said to Theatre.com. “I think we could have a lot of fun with it. There's Joseph himself, a girl narrator, and of course there's huge fun in finding an Elvis [the pharaoh character], as well as finding the best children's choir and the brothers. We could even have a situation where we keep sending the brothers to ridiculous places and ask the public to tell us where to send them next week. Then Tim [Rice, Joseph's original lyricist] and I could write a new song in the course of the week, which they could perform when they get there.”

If this idea is taken up, Lloyd Webber intends to revive the version of the show that Steven Pimlott directed at the London Palladium in 1991, which was also seen on Broadway at the Minskoff Theatre. “We might want to make a slightly revised take on it,” he added. More recently, the show returned to the West End in Bill Kenwright's touring production.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat tells the classic Biblical tale of Jacob and his twelve sons. Joseph, one of the youngest and most loved of Jacob's children, falls out of favor with his jealous brothers as he interprets dreams and receives special gifts from his father. Angry and upset, Joseph's brothers sell him as a slave to a band of passing nomads. Hoping to rid themselves of Joseph forever, the brothers instead set in motion a powerful string of events which lead to Joseph's installation as the king of Egypt's right-hand man.

Lloyd Webber is also due to participate soon in the U.S. spinoff of the How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?series when his Sound of Music co-producer David Ian seeks to find the stars for an American revival of Greas. He is set to appear in three episodes of the Grease program, though he's cautious about what the outcome may be. “I don't think there's really that much you can talk about with a Danny and a Sandy, except that they're pretty and they're fine,” he told us. “Whereas with Maria, I was genuinely saying that I wanted to find somebody to do this show in a way that it's not been done before.”

Lloyd Webber said that plans are afoot for the reality TV series focused on Joseph to air next year.