THEATER REVIEW / ‘JOE AND THE DREAMCOAT’ : ‘Technicolor’ Romp : Solvang Festival Theater has fun staging Tim Rice’s and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical collaboration.

In the face of goofiness on the monumental scale of PCPA Theaterfest’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” all you can do is switch off the higher cognitive faculties, settle back and have a good time.

Make that a great time.

Director/choreographer Brad Carroll’s staging is such an inventive whirlwind of sight gags, musical puns and unabashed romping, you’d have to be stiffer than King Tut to sit through it unmoved.

In fact, the staging all but eclipses the show itself.

Hitherto, “Joseph” was chiefly memorable as the footnoted first collaboration between Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

And while it isn’t in the same league as their later blockbusters (“Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita”), it bears familiar Rice-Webber signatures.

It has a Biblical/historical theme (it’s the story of Joseph, whose prophetic dreams so annoyed his 11 brothers that they sold him into slavery); it’s presented entirely in song; and it embraces a grab-bag of musical styles (including rock, vaudeville, calypso, country music, and even a French cabaret number with an invitation to “Raise your berets/To zose Canaan days...”).

Carroll has seized these elements with a vengeance and twisted them into a campy pretzel of well-choreographed pizzaz.

Here, nothing is out of bounds: crooning camels, singing sphinxes--even the Eveready bunny makes a cameo charge.

As you can probably gather, the show plays fast and loose with the Biblical tale of Joseph’s (Dan Johnson’s) days in Egypt, where his knack for dream interpretation earns him the good graces of the Pharaoh.

After all, if you had a slave who sang lyrics like, “All these things you saw in your pajamas/ Are a long-range forecast for your farmers,” wouldn’t you put him in your No. 2 slot? At least Joseph could probably spell “potato.”

All the songs are delivered with good-humored vitality, but the standout number would have to be the appearance of Pharaoh (Kurt Genge) in the guise and garb of that other great King of Memphis and postage stamp icon, Elvis Presley. Kristen Clark’s narrator really belts out the story hooks, and Johnson’s Joseph is a suitably sweet-throated prophet of vision and forgiveness.

But the success here belongs just as much to the seamless ensemble, mostly students from PCPA’s year-round theater conservatory program. Obviously, they’ve been doing their homework.

Production values stress vibrant color and freedom of movement in Everett Chase’s scaffold set, Michael Peterson’s lighting and Judith Ryerson’s costumes.

Musical director Jeremy Mann gets a well-mixed wall of sound from his live ensemble and from Jeff Mockus’ sound design.

For an uninterrupted 70 minutes of pure fun, an encounter with “Joseph” under the Solvang stars is hard to beat.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” will be performed at the Solvang Festival Theater Wednesdays through Sundays at 8:30 p.m. through Aug. 8. Prices are $15 and $18 Fridays and Saturdays; all other performances are $12 and $14. For reservations or further information, call (800) 221-9469.