Another opportunity to "Go go go!"

Among the popular crowd pleasers that make the rounds of Indianapolis stages, it seems the number one show is Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Now Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre in northwest Indianapolis is taking its turn, with performances daily except Mondays through Nov. 22.

Of course, not everyone is an avid theater-goer, so you may not have seen this show live in a long time, or even at all. To you I can easily recommend this production, which is well done and a lot of fun, with an excellent buffet meal thrown in to boot. It's family friendly, with a musical telling of the Biblical story of Joseph, his being sold into slavery and how his talent for interpreting dreams made him "Pharaoh's Number Two" in Egypt. The story is told through the happy ending of reuniting with his 11 brothers and all is well on the Nile (apparently this wasn't the mean Pharaoh Moses has to deal with later). The musical numbers are all in various styles, done comically, and in keeping with recent musical practice (thanks, "Mamma Mia") there is a "megamix" reprise of the songs at the end.

But what if you've seen the last dozen "Josephs" to trod the boards in Indy? This version still has its charms. The pace is good, getting you easily from song to song, and in an excellent change of style, Pharaoh (Sean Blake) is performed like James Brown rather than Elvis, and Blake and the company milk it for all it's worth. I also like that B&B has the Narrator (Amanda Lawson) dressed tastefully, as she is telling the story to a group of children (typical Narrator garb in other productions can edge on the risque). Rick Desloge as Joseph does look reminiscent of Donny Osmond (who led a very successful revival of the show some years back) and has the voice and charisma to perhaps qualify as a teen idol himself.

My only quibble is that with the small B&B stage, the costumes on the dancers during Pharaoh's dream kinda block out him and Joseph, but the big headresses get put away during the retelling. Of course, with so many performances to go, that bit of blocking will probably be improved by the end of the run.