Joseph Tickets:123 recommendations

The Independent

Rainbow glow adds the finishing touch to dazzling performances

Has Andrew Lloyd Webber managed, once again, to use a TV talent contest to make an unknown a star? Commercially, yes indeed, going by the hyperactive box office and an audience that reaches beyond the usual patrons of the West End - such as the woman who, entering the theatre behind an actress, asked her date, "Is she in the show?"

The Guardian

 Andrew Lloyd Webber's score shows his undoubted gift for pastiche, embracing, as it does, country and western and Caribbean calypso. Tim Rice's lyrics are also crisp, jaunty and clever. I still laugh, even after all these years, at Joseph's advice to the dreaming Pharaoh: "All those things you saw in your pyjamas, Are a long-range forecast to your farmers." Stripped to its essentials, the show has the innocent exuberance of youth and shows how much Lloyd Webber's innate romanticism benefited from Rice's verbal cheek.

The Times

 Given the freshness and lack of pretension that marked the show even after its creators revised and extended it for the professionals at the shabby Young Vic, it would almost have been a plus if the whole grisly process had thrown up a larky kid with more enthusiasm than talent.

As it happens, it threw up Lee Mead, who turns out to be both talented and enthusiastic.

The Telegraph

Lee Mead finds his dream

The West End is already too full of musicals, the show only recently ended its last run in London, and the BBC has generously given the enterprise many million pounds worth of free publicity with its talent show Any Dream Will Do.

And stone me, who won that contest? The seasoned pro, Lee Mead.

Yet I have to admit to voting for Lee myself and to experiencing a sugar rush of pure pleasure at last night's exuberant premiere when I found myself in the same row as the losing contestants on Any Dream Will Do. The generous enthusiasm with which they whooped and applauded Lee at the end was touching to behold.