Credit: Telegraph.co.uk

In all honesty, I believe musical theatre is God’s gift to the Arts. I really do.

But with a show like this, who needs dissenters to perpetuate the stereotype that Broadway is—for lack of better word—gay?

Any Dream Will Do is a reality-styled BBC series which picks, elimination-style, the next Joseph for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Like most Idol-fashioned shows, this has all the trappings of a hit. Except it’s about a bunch of men singing on stage in bright long coats (which don’t change each episode), with abilities such as dancing, looking doe-eyed and singing with exaggerated gestures counting towards their popularity, not against.

And those coats—it completely bothers me that what they’re wearing below them looks like a black tank top with a dipping neckline—a get up much more common on women.

Perhaps videos will speak a million words, instead:

• I Dreamed a Dream-a woman’s song from Les Miserables, sung as a duet, with each guy attempting to out-doe-eye the other.
• Good news: Josh Groban is a guest on the show. Bad news: the show producers pit the boys against each other to sing a love song with Josh, with plenty of eye contact. (Also notice the sea of crushed looks on the losers’ faces when Josh doesn’t pick them.) Extremely gay moment.
• Lee Mead’s winning video: Yes, it’s also a promotional clip for a Technicolor Dreamcoat, but a psychedelic video with rainbows bursting everywhere…And a dancing man with significant cleavage?

Doesn’t this show water down the magic of musical productions somewhat? By commoditising it, leaving the choice of the lead up to a bunch of bored housewives who may only vote the prettiest, and not the best Joseph, how does this not sink Broadway to the levels of any cheap Idol reality production?

Not to separate Broadway as an elite form of the Arts, but as a fundamentally theatrical production, its singers are expected to be more than just well-packaged voices; Broadway actors are singing, acting, dancing machines on steroids—night after night, after night.

No reality show can fully capture that, or be the appropriate medium for selecting its cast.