Frequent visitors will, apart from wasting time due to the lack of frequency of posts, notice that we have fetched up at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton on occasion. Due to Wife’s recent birthday, and due to her being enamoured by the Any Dream Will Do programme on the Beeb a while back, a booking was mandatory when Joseph clocked in at the Mayflower recently.

As the winning Joseph, Lee Mead was presumably busy with starry things, it fell to Keith Second Place as he is rather brutally billed on the programme website to carry the show. Proper name Keith Jack and hailing from Midlothian apparently, he has fortunately filled out a tad from when he was on tele. No big closeups on stage. The camera can’t help you at the back of the stalls.

Now I know that in certain circles it is quite the thing to dismiss shows like Joseph as lightweight and somehow lacking. To be entirely truthful, I was dwelling on the borders of that place myself when we booked. Fortunately the audience was not filled with ‘so impress me’ cynics and when the final curtain brought a standing ovation, I was standing there with them, clapping away like a clappy person. Yes I know that doesn’t scan quite right if you have a certain kind of mind, just move on…..

Someone who had seen Joseph in the West End had told me in no uncertain terms that it was ‘perfect’. But you know it didn’t matter we were in a provincial theatre which obviously has to make fiscal compromises compared to the West End, the enjoyment can only start when the noise gets into your ears and and the colours get into your eyes. Assuming a reasonable level of performer competancy, from then on it depends on you how enjoyable it is. Wife is so much better at enjoying things (and somewhat less cynical) than I but, without sounding like a self-help advert, it is possible to change how you process stuff and so I really enjoyed it. This was a good production with a number of very good performances and the added advantage of a short 35 minute journey home at the end!

I had always had a sneaking like for the theme tune Any Dream Will Do, after all it’s dead easy to play on guitar. What I hadn’t reckoned on is the humour in a lot of the other lyrics. For a show that has been around for so long, it’s still well worth going to. If you get a chance on the nationwide tour, suspend your cynicism, open your mind and sing along if you must. You may well find yourself enjoying it.

Incidentally some of the dosh generated through the Premium Rate calls for the voting for the Joseph TV show and others, went to the BBC Performing Arts Fund which awards bursaries to performers to help in their development. On visiting their website however you learn that there are no current schemes open. Hopefully they are just ‘resting’ rather than it being a sign of these troubled times.