Community Theater at Its Finest

Fortunately, my wish came through.

Last year I wrote about going to see my favorite play, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the ninth time. In that post I noted that it was my third blog post about going to see Joseph, and I hoped that it would not be my last.

Well, welcome to my fourth post about Joseph.

Last night we (my wife, son, and I) went to see the play at Playcrafters in Skippack, a small community theater that seats 100 people. The show was great. Joseph and the Narrator had great voices, and the Pharaoh did a great Elvis when he sang Seven Fat Cows.

We had front row seats (a first), and at some points during the play the actors were less than a foot from us.

It was wonderful watching a small town come together to put on a show, it reminded me a bit of the musical that was being put on in the town of Stars Hollow as part of the Gilmore Girls TV show.

There was a wide range of ages and experience in the Joseph play, but the one thing everyone had in common was how much fun they seemed to be having up on stage. I hope they realize that all of their practice paid off, making for an enjoyable night at the theater for the audience.

The show also made me a fan of community theater, and got me thinking about what role I could play if Joseph ever came to one of the local community theaters (ideally I could be one of the brothers who has no solo singing parts – the problem, besides my lack of a singing voice, is that I could be older than the guy who would play my dad, Jacob).

As I noted in last year’s blog, I have seen Joseph at essentially every possible setting:

• grade school (St. Thomas Good Counsel)
• middle school (Keith Valley)
• high school (North Penn)
• college (Villanova)
• church school (St. Davids)
• summer theater school (Raleigh)
• regional theater (Media Theater)
• national tours (two separate tours in Philadelphia, 2006 and 2015)
• and now we can add community theater (Playcrafters of Skippack)

We’ve also seen movie versions of it, and there is talk that Andrew Lloyd Webber, one of the original creators of the play, and Elton John are teaming up to create an animated, big screen version of the movie.)

We’d love to see the show on Broadway, so if you’re reading this Andrew, please know that you’ll be able to sell at least a few tickets to the Borden family if you decide to have a Broadway revival.

My goal is to see at least 12 different versions of the play, one for each brother. And once I hit that number, perhaps I’ll shoot for 29 versions, to match the number of colors in Joseph’s amazing technicolor dreamcoat.

In the meantime, congrats and thank you to the Playcrafters of Skippack for a wonderfully entertaining show, and I wish you the best with the rest of your performances.