When Chris Jaftha blazes onto the stage as Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, he elevates a dazzling show into orbit. Gleaming in gold jewellery, a gold waistcoat and shorts designed to flaunt his Adonis physique, he evokes Elvis at his best when he belts out Song of the King.
He's only one of the stars. Dylan Janse van Rensburg as Joseph, who won Best Lead Male in a Musical for Spring Awakening at the 2025 Naledi Theatre Awards last month, and narrator Lelo Ramasimong glittered as brightly. Making the top 10 on Idols SA, her roles have included award-winning performances in Little Shop of Horrors and the musicals African Footprint and Dreamgirls.
Their soaring voices, fluid dancing and acting are the axis around which the show, a modern parody of the Biblical tale, flows. Solos, such as Janse van Rensburg’s rendition of Close Every Door, give the audience a chance to catch their breath. In the song his powerful voice conjures up loss across generations, from the Les Misérables classic Empty Chairs at Empty Tables to pop songs about abandonment.
One of the most popular musicals by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for nearly five decades, Joseph originates with an Old Testament story of a favourite son whose father Jacob gives him a “coat of many colours” — delivered in the modernised production in a TakeALot box — evoking jealousy among his 11 brothers.
Finding Joseph and his dreams intolerable, they sell him into slavery in exile in Egypt, where he rises to become Pharaoh’s right-hand man and protects the nation from famine. To avoid starvation, his brothers travel to Egypt and are forced to grovel before Joseph, who they fail to recognise, until they're ultimately reunited.
The imaginative interpretation of Joseph, directed by Anton Luitingh and Duane Alexander, brims with layers of fashion from every era and evokes diverse genres of music from opera to rock.
The glorious costumes by Niall Griffin complement the swings in mood from the opening scene, where the patriarch Jacob is decked out in a cowboy hat and boots sitting on a deck chair, to the opulence in Pharaoh’s court and the neon pop and rap outfits of the dancers in the final scenes.
Even the props such as an adorable sheep, whose ribs protrude during the famine, reflect the creativity that went into every detail of this interpretation by producers Pieter Toerien and the Luitingh Alexander Musical Theatre Academy. The ensemble’s buoyant, acrobatic dancing, choreographed by Duane Alexander and Jared Schaedler, imbues the show with an unbridled sense of fun.
Oliver Hauser’s lighting and sound designer David Classen enhance the ambience while Charl-Johan Lingenfelder, musical supervisor, and musical director Amy Campbell coax an astonishing dynamic range from the vocalists.
When Pharoah observes his acolytes falling for Joseph, Jaftha imbues his lines in Stone the Crows with the forlorn tone of John Travolta singing of heartbreak in Grease as dancers careen about the stage. Jaftha commands the stage, in the same way Brendan van Rhyn did as Frank-N-Furter in the production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Joseph, which has been performed thousands of times across 80 countries in theatres from New York's Broadway to London's West End, was sold out in Cape Town for its two-month run and received standing ovations.
With the talents on offer, the production was expected to be spectacular but, at every note, beat, twist, turn and outfit change, the interpretation feels like it outshines the original.
* Joseph And The Technicolour Dreamcoat opened in Johannesburg at the Pieter Toerien Montecasino main theatre last week and runs until September 8. On October 3, it returns to Theatre on the Bay. Contact Webtickets or Theatre on the Bay at 021 438 3300.
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