A dream start for Joseph, the chosen one

Trivial? You bet. Goosed to within an inch of its life? Undeniably. But it is amusing and agreeable and perfect for ten-year-olds, as well as grown-ups who have had a couple of sharp ones in the bar beforehand.

Lee - he is one of those actors for whom the Mr Mead bit seems arch - is a handsome hit.

scroll down for more

The voice is weak in the lower register and at one point it almost disappeared completely, washed away by an over-pumpy band and maybe by a dry mouth. He sounded slightly blocked-nosey in the early moments. Flu, maybe.

But he has stage presence and a winning way and the public, having voted for him on BBC1's Any Dream Will Do, will forgive him much. Good. He deserves it.

He certainly held the show together at a splashy first night, as big a gathering of plastic boobs and forced smiles as I have seen this side of the Atlantic. Producer Bill Kenwright tends to attract such a crowd.

When a technical hitch brought the first half temporarily to a halt - 'enter Ishmaelites', said the script, but they didn't - Lee and his co-stars bounced back from disaster with aplomb.

'Ishmaelites done a runner', perhaps. Or 'Ishmaelites playing poker in dressing room and miss their cue'. The show seized up for three minutes but nobody minded much.

Joseph isn't a show where the spell can really be broken. You just pick up where you left off.

The biblical tale of Joseph and his 11 brothers is the coathanger on which the young Andrew Lloyd Webber and his witty lyricist Tim Rice hung various pastiches.

This musical has the exuberance of a young composer's work, but there is little emotion in it and a shortage of real heart. The show offers perhaps only half a tear, right at the end. The rest of it is breathlessly 'up'.

There is a hoedown, and then a calypso (genres little known in Old Testament Egypt, so far as I know) and in another scene the wicked brothers suddenly develop French accents. Bizarre, but it raises plenty of laughs.

The cameo of the night belongs to Dean Collinson, who gives us an Elvis Presley Pharaoh. Terrific stuff.

Lee himself is not a natural comedian. He does not move particularly well. But he hurls himself into the honking cacophony and is almost as gorgeous to behold as Joseph's multi-coloured coat.

With his cascading black curls and a strong jaw he could be a cross between Donny Osmond and Sir Tom Stoppard.

His chest and back seem to have been waxed by french polishers, they are so shiny. A little rivulet of sweat formed on his chest and I was worried he might fuse his hidden microphone, giving himself an electric shock.

He spends much of the evening flexing his pecs and flashing yards of (hairy, rugger playerish) inside leg. There were wolf whistles and a lot of whooping from the audience, not all of it from women.

Meanwhile, the attendant panoply includes stuffed sheep, psychedelic circles, and high-fiving hieroglyph men who play air guitar. Madness. But then they do say 'Jacob's Crackers'.

Preeya Kalidas, who plays the narrator, almost dislodged a couple of my fillings, so tunelessly did she screech one or two notes. On either side of the stage a large choir of pop-eyed children warble away like nestlings.

At first I was uncertain if their enthusiasm was infectious or mightily irritating but I slowly thawed and by the end was humming along with the rest of the stalls.

Joseph had won me round. As it will do London.