Despite all of the children in the school being around eight or nine, Maria Friedman's son Toby Sams Friedman, then four, was among the school children. He is the boy to whom she directly sings at the beginning.
Although the DVD was passed as "Exempt from classification" in the U.K., its depictions of Biblical characters smoking and drinking before an audience of schoolchildren rendered the decision controversial. In one scene, Joseph politely declines the offer of a cocktail.
"Coat of Many Colors" is a possible mistranslation. According to the eleventh-century scholar Muhammed Ibn Ibrahim Al-Thalabi, the original words were "garment with marks". (King James Bible translators added the word "many"). It is not certain what the "marks" were nor what they represented. A few controversial scholars believe that the garment may have been a symbol of Jacob's position as High Priest of the tribe, and that the older brothers were angry because Jacob chose to pass them over and give Joseph the priesthood instead of them.
Amazingly Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote this show when he was 17 and Tim Rice was a 21 year old law student
The original West End production opened in 1972. The Broadway production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" opened at the Royale Theater on January 27, 1982, ran for seven hundred forty-seven performances, and was nominated for the 1982 Tony Awards for the Best Musical, Book, and Score.