By Maria Sermersheim
Meditatione Ignis
The past few years, Moreau Seminary here at the University of Notre Dame has produced an amateur spring musical, which has been a great project of community building and entertainment. The cast consists of seminarians and a few female friends from the theology department who can round out the vocal range and play the women’s roles. So last year and this year, I’ve happily participated and enjoyed our theatrical antics. The musical selections of the past were “The Prince of Egypt” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” both of which portrayed clearly biblical and Catholic content and themes. This year’s musical selection, while along the same lines of biblical content, strikingly omits the biblical theme, which provoked my reflection below.
This year, Moreau Seminary and Friends presents Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” which is colorful, energetic and depicts the basic plotline of Genesis 37-46 … but omits God.
The musical never attributes Joseph’s endurance or success to God, even though the Lord’s providence and presence are the foundation of the biblical story. Instead, the musical contrives to present Joseph’s story entirely through a comedic lens. Funny turns of phrase, clever foreshadowing and the eclectic variety of musical numbers communicate to the audience that everything should be made light of and enjoyed with the most superficial considerations of pleasure and entertainment, despite the fact that the story is about how Joseph was betrayed by his brothers with murderous intent, sold into slavery, falsely accused and imprisoned, eventually raised to the status of Pharaoh’s right-hand man, was able to provide for the people of Egypt and others through a difficult famine, and most amazingly, managed to forgive his brothers when they came to him vulnerable and starving and did not recognize him. The content of Genesis 37-46 is generally included in the musical, but the essential theme of divine providence is not.
Throughout the story in Scripture, the narrator tells us, “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man … the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands” (Genesis 39:2-3; cf. Genesis 39:21-23). Joseph always attributes his dream interpretations to God (Genesis 41), and in the end, Joseph even says that it was not his brothers’ selling him into slavery that put him in Egypt, but God who put him there, so that Joseph would be in a good position to provide them food during the famine (Genesis 45:5). Instead of “a lucky break,” it is God’s presence and blessing that guides Joseph through trial to glory, and not a prideful glory, but a glory that serves and forgives.
Clearly, I am not a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s gutting of the Joseph story. But I am a fan of the fruit that our production of it has borne because we have certainly not left God out of the picture. We begin and end every rehearsal with a prayer, and we began several rehearsals early with a Bible study, which has helped us to highlight the great contrasts between the message of the musical and the message of Scripture. Seeing these contrasts and the way that Webber narrated the story without God makes it all the more beautiful to see where God truly is present and how his presence totally transforms the story. Before our performances in a couple of weeks, we will invite the audience to reread the Joseph story on their own and to note the contrasts themselves, which we have found to be a beautiful exercise — perhaps even more so than if we had simply changed the script to match the Scripture.
God is intimately involved in every moment of human history. He operates precisely through Joseph’s suffering, not in spite of it, and Joseph only succeeds because he relies on the Lord for everything. This is a story of God’s presence and providence. So when we sing on stage about Joseph’s “lucky break” and lament the inaccessibility of answers to big questions that “lie far from this world,” it is a great gift to recognize the beauty of the opposite. We know, as we just celebrated the Paschal Mystery, that the answer to sin and suffering, to life and death, has actually come into this world, and the answer is Jesus Christ. There is no luck, there is grace — and God directs it all.