JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOUR DREAMCOAT

STRAIGHT TO VHS HOME VIDEO - NOV. 1999

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picture the scene: it is the summer of 2012. i'm not tall enough to reach the bathroom light by myself yet, so my brother tied a piece of string to the pull cord so that i could reach. the unrelenting brightness of summer makes the school day seem to last forever, and makes everyone wish playbreaks were longer. over the course of a few weeks, we notice more and more decoration in the school halls. first, a display about some fairy tale, we think? then some desert scenery in the main hall. then a big list of colours on the wall behind us when we sit in assembly. until finally there is a final decoration, one that completely shifts the way we can use the main hall. a stage. backdrops painted in wonderful blue with silver, cookie-cutter stars. there are palm trees propped up. when all of these pieces form together i begin to buzz a little. ...there's going to be a play! the night-sky of the stage reminds me of christmas, it's the same stage we use for the nativity. in the autumn, i'll be too old for the nativity, but right now it's summer -- and that's definitely NOT nativity time. what could it be? the older students seem to know. i see a girl practising something up there in the morning, and she laughs every time i clap ferociously. i like her costume. it's a simple, stripy jumper. i ask her everything i can every chance i get. my friend's neighbour lets slip that he is playing a pharoah. i have a reputation for my love of ancient egypt. we follow him around the halls and bow to him like he's actually a king. he begs us to stop every time but we laugh so hard that we know it has to be done. one summer's day, when the lights are all off because the sun is bright enough to fill the classroom and i am getting restless, our teacher makes us stop early, and we walk to the stage room in pregnant silence. my teacher says we're watching the 'dress rehearsal' and explains to us that it might not go perfectly so we should be extra kind and quiet. my mum bought tickets to both nights of the proper performances in order to appease me. i feel very smug about that. the hall is dark too, but there's no windows in here to compensate -- only the big webs of metal and wires that floodlight the stage. once we're all sat down, the head of year six builds the atmosphere, and the girl in the striped jumper begins to sing.

jump forward a decade, and my adoration for the girl in the striped jumper means that i'm now in the drama studio and sitting on the world's most uncomfortable plastic chair, bitching about this exam we've got coming up. we have to pick two practictioners, and some of their stage productions and compare how they were created and how the people use the medium. we research two andrew lloyd webber musicals: Phantom, and Joseph. The teacher puts on the 1999 VHS film, and I'm transported back to that summer all those years ago, and it's clear my best friend next to me, who i have known for less than a year, is having a similar rush of memories. we are the only people in the room who know the whole musical off by heart, word by word. and we make sure everyone else knows it. We were meant to write about four musicals, but i only really wrote about two. I come out of that exam with the highest grade out of our class.

now it's last week, and i'm lying on the sofa with a fever of 38.5 degrees celsius (104 deg. f), feeling like absolute dogwater. i see a rip of joseph on youtube, and i think 'well, i have a fever, and that film is a fever, so i should be in for a good laugh.' Instead i text my friends to let them know that this is the best film ever created, and that i can't believe nobody realises it.

This musical means the world to me. It's the first one i ever saw live, even if the cast was a bunch of 10 year olds. without this film, and these characters, i would not have gone into the arts at all. not writing, not painting, not performing. without seeing a character like Friedman's Narrator, who is altogether an unremarkable yet slightly odd female character, i would not have realised that i can also be an unremarkable yet slightly odd person. up until that point, girls in films had been pretty and frivolous, they won by being pretty and feeling blindly. The Narrator's charm comes from being clever and from being a little mischievious.

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