If you haven’t yet read Act I, obviously you’ve been wasting time on the internet. Stop trying to figure out why Google+ needs to exist and go read Act I before you read the rest of this post.
All done? Okay then, let’s go.
As you know, Act I ended with Joseph participating in a colorful song and dance number while in prison. What? Do I really need to say this again? Okay: in musicals, that sort of thing is perfectly normal. Just go with it. Give your suspension of disbelief the workout it obviously needs.
Anyway, when the curtain rose on Act II, we were introduced to Pharaoh. The typical portrayal of most pharaohs tends to be on the stern side, probably because pharaohs tended to be on the stern side. However, this musical gives Pharaoh a bit of a different image.
Yes, that’s Pharaoh Elvis. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Pharaoh Elvis sang with sideburns.
It turned out Pharaoh was All Shook Up due to a series of strange dreams. Hey, wait. Strange dreams? Wasn’t there a main character with strange dream experience on his resume? Yeah, I think there was.
Pharaoh didn’t know about Joseph, but his butler did. Remember the butler from Act I? Just as Joseph said, the butler got out of prison and made it back on the job, and when Pharaoh started singing about his problematic dreams, the butler butled Joseph onto the scene. Before long, Joseph had the dreams interpreted — they foreshadowed a time of plenty followed by a time of famine — and Pharaoh repaid him by making him Vice Pharaoh.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Joseph’s father and brothers were feeling the effects of that famine. What do you do when you’re experiencing great hardship in a musical? Come on, people. You should know the answer to that by now.
This time the sadness involved berets and French accents. Am I resisting the temptation to make surrender jokes right now? Yes. Yes I am. Let’s move on.
After singing their sad French song, the brothers heard that Egypt had food available. This, of course, was due to Vice Pharaoh Joseph’s savvy planning, but since they hadn’t yet signed up for Twitter, Joseph’s brothers didn’t know he was a prominent government official in Egypt. (Joseph’s actual tweet: “Just went from prisoner to govt man in 5 mins. Doesn’t it usually happen the other way around? LOL! I’m just playin, @PharaohElvis.”)
In hungry desperation, the brothers traveled to Egypt to buy food. And…hey, check it out! Joseph’s brothers are bowing down to him! They still don’t know it’s him, of course, but that doesn’t matter. The dreams still came true.
You’ll note that Joseph’s helpful dream illustrators made the trip to Egypt to help him out again. They’re good people.
Joseph was happy to see his dreams coming true, but since his brothers still didn’t know it was him, he still wanted to have some fun with them. I guess that’s understandable, what with their selling him into slavery and all. So, after selling them sacks of food, he arranged to have one of his fancy-pants super-duper shiny gold goblets put in his youngest brother’s sack of food. Then, when they were preparing to leave, he accused them of stealing his fancy-pants super-duper shiny gold goblet and — of course — found it in Benjamin’s sack of food.
This caused the brothers great consternation because Benjamin was Jacob’s other favorite son, and they weren’t exactly thrilled about going home down yet another one of his favorite sons. To avoid that unpleasant prospect, they begged Joseph for mercy.
Of course, since he was the one facing hard time in the Egyptian slammer, Benjamin was a little bit interested in mercy, too.
Joseph’s administrative assistants put together some choreography to accompany the brothers’ begging.
Somewhere in the process of pleading Benjamin’s case, the brothers slipped into a calypso mood.
After hearing his brothers pleas for mercy, Joseph began to think it might be time for him to reveal his identity to his brothers. But since nobody ever just thinks in a musical, Joseph sang about it.
You’d think his brothers would have been able to hear what he was singing, but somehow they missed it. They were probably busy playing Angry Birds.
Having worked out his anxiety through song, Joseph finally let his brothers know he wasn’t just some nameless bureaucrat. Joseph’s administrative assistants assisted in this, too.
His dream illustrators got in on the big reveal, too.
Having finally reconciled with his brothers, Joseph somehow got his fancy long-winded coat back. I’m pretty sure that part wasn’t Biblical — I don’t recall his coat floating down from the sky and settling on his shoulders — but it made for a nice conclusion and a fun visual.
With his coat back in place, Joseph and his brothers wrapped up the final song so they could get back to their smartphones. What, you think Joseph wouldn’t tweet big news like that? (Actual tweet: “Punk’d my bros pretty good. They thought Ben would go to jail! Almost didn’t keep a straight face. Bet they don’t sell me again.”)
There was no word as to what the narrators were going to do once the story ended. Did they have other stories to narrate, or were they unemployed? Or were they going to keep following Joseph around and narrating his story even if nobody paid attention? Inquiring minds want to know. Inquiring minds also want to know why narrate isn’t spelled narrarate, because that’s how I’ve always pronounced it.
Anyway, this brings us to the end of Joseph. If you enjoyed this…fantastic. If you didn’t, then you should go to the next CAP production so you don’t have to rely on me for a recap.
