I only have to hear the first two bars and I’m right back in the Arts Theatre Belfast. It was a Wednesday in August 1978 and The Ulster Actors Company was celebrating. We’d been given the rights to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat purely because no touring company would come to Northern Ireland during the Troubles. So interested was Tim Rice in the company that he actually travelled to Belfast to meet and greet the talented actors.
People queued up and down Botanic Avenue for tickets, so much so that within a few months we staged Joseph again and thousands of men, women and a lot of children had their first taste of the Webber-Rice genius.
The late John Anderson was musical director, Houston Marshall the set designer, Eilish McDonnell in charge of costumes and Roy Heayberd was artistic director.
What a night! I had just joined the company as press officer. I sat in the auditorium with my seven-year-old daughter. She still remembers vividly what happened.
Trevor Kelly brought the house down when, in the guise of Elvis Presley, he rocked the Pharaoh character, strutted through the auditorium draping red scarves round necks of the adoring audience.
He came to Susie and knelt beside her and placed a scarf round her neck. That scarf is still a prized possession and her love of Trevor has never wavered.
Value Of Theatre
Part of the production involved primary school children from around the country. Each night a different choir stood on the stage singing the wonderful songs and for the second production, to mark the United Nations International Year of the Child, the company invited school children to submit ideas for the front cover of the programme.
Wanda McIlwain (11) from Hillsborough was chosen as winner. A pupil at Princess Gardens School, she was invited to the Arts Theatre to receive her prize from Trevor and, like Susie, was overwhelmed by the Joseph experience.
We’d been given the rights to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat purely because no touring company would come to Northern Ireland during the Troubles... People queued up and down Botanic Avenue for tickets
One of the choir members was Geoffrey Cherry from Lisburn. “I was only 10 and I’ve very fond memories of that summer,” he recalls. “I made many friends, indeed we’re still in touch, and when I hear the musical introduction to Pharaoh’s Story I’m right back on the stage of the Arts singing with joy, ‘Pharaoh he was a powerful man, with the ancient world in the palm of his hand’.”
Read more: Review: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Years later I had the delight of meeting Geoffrey at a Christmas show in Pond Park primary school where he became principal 30 years ago; we reminisced and he told me how much he valued his first theatrical venture and he has instilled this love of theatre into his young pupils and over the ears has built confidence, self-esteem and confidence not only in the classroom but in musical theatre productions which delight parents and grandparents as well as staff.
“Each year we produce a show involving all of our 90 P7 pupils,” he tells me. “We hire the Island Hall theatre in Lisburn which gives the children an opportunity to experience a professional setting. I counted up that I have musically directed Joseph at least seven times.”
Geoffrey started Lisnagarvey Youth Society 31 years ago. It’s a cross-community youth theatre and many members have gone out to make a future in and around the stage.
The importance of theatre was obvious to me during the Arts matinees. Children would pile into the foyer, herded by their teachers, on their best behaviour and not willing to talk to the likes of me, a bit scared and not over-excited.
Come the interval they were full of chat with each other but come the end of the show they came out bouncing. They couldn’t wait to tell me how great it was. “Joseph was sad, Miss, but he got happy at the end.”
They probably had their first taste of freedom, during those couple of memorable hours they were able to express themselves, they could shout out, they could clap, they were absorbed in the technicolor dream.
So the old music hall song ‘Don’t put your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington’ doesn’t ring true as far as I’m concerned...
Welcome Home
And now Joseph returns to Belfast and the Grand Opera House, this time with a professional touring company visiting 21 venues across Britain and Ireland. Joseph will gain a fan club as Adam Filipe sings those famous songs, whirling his amazing dreamcoat around the stage singing ‘Any Dream Will Do’.
I saw the production in London’s West End when Jason Donovan played Joseph and, sitting in the second row, his exuberant singing drenched me in spittle - my claim to fame!
The wonderful role of Pharaoh falls this week to Joe McElderry in the production which opens tomorrow and runs until Sunday February 23.
