THEATER REVIEWS : ‘Joseph’: Dream Come True of Pure Fun : Golden West College’s version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classic is a wigged-out, retro fantasy.

Golden West College’s administrators had best be warned. Once enough of your student body sees the kicky production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Tim Rice’s musical, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” they’ll be changing majors.

How will they go back to accounting or biology once they see that their fellow students in the drama department are having about as many jollies as the law allows? This is fulfilling requirements toward a degree? Heck, this is more fun than a toga party.

Even better, director-choreographer Brandee Williams’ staging is an act of getting “Joseph” more or less back to its roots.

Composer Webber and lyricist Rice were roughly around the age of Williams’ student cast when the pair wrote this daft retelling of the biblical tale of Joseph and his coat of many colors. It marked their first musical effort, fashioned in 1968 for the boys choir at London’s Colet Court School.

And to be blunt, it may be Webber’s most purely enjoyable, delicious, unpretentious work--a pop biblical prelude to, but more delectable than, “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Williams’ show, though, has one more precedent. This being “Joseph’s” 25th anniversary, the official Webber-monitored revival last spring (which this reviewer missed) would seem to cast a shadow over any other 1993 revival.

By every account, the silver anniversary edition set new high (or low) standards for cramming as many synthesizers and aerobicizers on one stage as possible.

The Golden West edition is perhaps not as cursed with a limitless budget and demonstrates that a trimmer “Joseph” is probably the best kind of all. Nick DeGregorio’s musical direction (with a few of his own musical arrangements) takes the sound of this brief work--one hour, excluding intermission and encore--back to its ‘60s sources, deep in the land of the Beatles.

Like Lennon and McCartney, Webber and Rice were trying out every style, and they come at you here like a wigged-out retro fantasy: The straight-ahead pop nature of “Joseph’s Dreams” and the signature tune, “Go, Go, Go Joseph”; the country silliness of “One More Angel in Heaven” (nicely led here by Nathan Holden’s Levi); razor-sharp lampooning of weepy French cafe music in “Those Canaan Days” (Rudy Martinez’s Reuben turns this into much more of a comic highlight than might be expected); and “Benjamin Calypso,” which really gets the kids swaying.

“Joseph” takes retro even further, going back to Elvis ‘50s-style as Jeff Glover’s in-control Pharaoh rules the court in his blue-suede shoes. The attitude throughout is just the right balance of sophomoric foolishness and an attention to craft and detail: Witness Charles P. Davis’ terrific, endlessly jokey pop-up set (unlike in some past Golden West shows, the machinery ran smoothly Sunday).

Or, for that matter, witness Eric Anderson as a sympathetic Joseph, appropriately well-buffed, yes, but also a young victim of circumstances as he’s tossed to the Pharaoh’s slave owners by his jealous brothers.

*

Anderson may lack the wherewithal to switch from a cock-of-the-walk kid showing off his cool, multicolored coat to biblical hero (he stays more or less a nice guy throughout). But he’s not a boring stud; he has a strong, solid pop voice to lead the cavorting all the way to the end, when he truly is cock-of-the-walk.

Anderson gets immeasurable help from Kim Royster as the Narrator, singing the tale to her band of happy chorus kids. Royster, with a silky voice that’s a ringer for Mary (“Those Were the Days”) Hopkin, keeps the nonsense from shooting out the roof. After all, every “Joseph” needs some adult supervision.

* “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Mainstage Theatre, Golden West College, 15744 Golden West St., Costa Mesa. Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; matinees Saturday and Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Sunday. $12. (714) 895-8378. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes. Eric Anderson: Joseph

Kim Royster: Narrator

Jeff Glover: Pharaoh

A Golden West College Fine Arts Division production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Tim Rice’s musical. Directed and choreographed by Brandee Williams. Musical director: Nick DeGregorio. Set: Charles P. Davis. Lights: Bill Georges and Mario Radicke. Costumes: Susan Thomas Babb. Sound: Scott Steidinger.