ONLY BIG RATINGS WILL DO

Ahead of the grand final this coming Saturday, I have over the last day or two been watching the ten previous legs of BBC1’s Saturday night ratings banker, Any Dream Will Do. This is the follow-up to last year’s How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? in which Connie Fisher was chosen to lead a revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music by “you, the public”. The production company owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who can just about afford to run such risks as these, was mounting that revival and, seeing a fine chance of three months’ worth of free prime-time publicity courtesy of the licence-fee payers, Lord Lloyd Webber allowed himself to be cast as the Sir Alan Sugar of this particular endeavour. Any Dream Will Do is a further knockout competition to cast the eponym in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It is even more welcome free publicity because m’lord is its composer – it was his first show to be produced almost forty years ago – so he will receive many more handsome royalties from the revival’s take.

The first two episodes, screened before the series went live to allow viewers to vote for their favoured Josephs, showed the process of rounding up and then whittling down the winsome boys who would compete in the knockout stretch. There was much loose talk about how showbiz works – “this is the harsh reality of auditions” cried presenter Graham Norton in his pastel silk suit/silk shirt combo. I have auditioned a good few actors in my time and I can tell you that the real audition process is very little like this.

Initially, the judges were selecting a finite group of candidates so it made nonsense to tell the first and then the second and then the third auditioner that he was in. You can’t sensibly start selecting until you have seen the whole field. Moreover, the criteria for choice seemed random and highly subjective but then only one judge – producer Bill Kenwright – is regularly in a casting role (ALW took a back seat at this stage).

It was quickly clear that departures from industry practice were all to do with winding up the tension of the television series. In professional auditions, no one gets short-listed just because they beg to be included, nor by apparently cornering Lloyd Webber in his office and insisting on a second chance. Nor are there contrived “sing-offs”.

The level of emotion displayed by the boys was extraordinary. I don’t know which drew the more tears, being selected or not being selected. You do wonder how so many young lads who are, with a few rather surprising exceptions, wholly amateurs can be claiming suddenly that to play Joseph is all they’ve ever lived for. “I felt ashamed to be in the bottom two” one boy declared, the week after he survived a vote and a sing-off. Oh please! That kind of emotional overload doesn’t augur well for the prospects of starting to build a career in music theatre, which is presumably the true reward for winning this competition.

I may not have put myself up for audition since university dram soc days but I’ve been through many job interviews, several times as a short-listed candidate and as a runner-up (“the other guy was just hungrier”). You have to learn to maintain a healthy equanimity about the process. I once lived with a boy who was starting out in showbiz and he would feel personally slighted when he failed to land a job and would pester people for explanations. I tried to explain to him that there’s only ever one explanation for why you don’t get a part or a job: someone else got it. Except in cases of obvious unsuitability, the rejection isn’t about you, it’s about somebody else. Any Dream Will Do never tried to inculcate this important default position in any of the boys who wept their way back onto the street.

Amid all this emotion and hugging and clutching, one aspect of the music theatre world was conspicuously absent. Those contestants with girlfriends were allowed – indeed encouraged – to mention them and to have them at the live shows for cheering on purposes. Those with boyfriends remained undeclared. While judge Denise Van Outen flirted outrageously with several of the boys, neither Norton nor judge John Barrowman chose to or was permitted to allude to his own gayness. Indeed, Barrowman “accused” the contestant who seemed the likeliest to be gay of being “too camp” in his delivery of one song, a curiously inapt and catty criticism.

Once the candidates had been reduced to twelve, the viewers got to vote to reject one each week. This made for a tortuously drawn-out business but it also meant that the boys all acquired the fame that television bestows. Showbiz is packed with young strugglers who would do anything for a fraction of so much exposure; even sleep with Andrew Lloyd Webber (there must be one or two who would do that, though, to use a favoured phrase of Norton’s, “it’s a big ask”. During the Maria series, a Guardian reviewer described ALW as “a horrid toad” and, while that’s not what you’d call kind, it’s not inaccurate. I hasten to add that I have absolutely no reason to imagine that Lloyd Webber has ever resorted to the casting couch. His early writing partner, Tim Rice, did have an affair with Evita leading lady Elaine Page, however).

Another way in which the series has not reflected reality has been the extent to which the aspirants have been permitted to argue with the judges. I would have slapped that down at the outset. Whatever you may think of Lloyd Webber’s œuvre – and I wouldn’t cross the road to see one of his shows – you can’t argue with his experience, his power or his astuteness.

And these kids know nothing. They may have an idealised image of themselves as Joseph in their heads but that’s largely where it stays. Conveying that self-image to others on stage is the trick and the performers are not qualified to judge their own success at any level. Wanting it is not to be confused with earning it. Moreover, this “knowing” that “I can be Joseph” is predicated on a fantasy performance before their families, friends and fans (like in the BBC studio). Being Joseph at a Thursday matinee in February when two uncertain understudies are on and the house is dominated by dozing pensioners and restless school parties is a bigger test of their ability to sustain a career in music theatre.

As the contestants fell away, you wondered who was monitoring the vote count. Lloyd Webber, while embracing this eleven-week prime-time promotion, would have wanted to do everything short of naked manipulation to ensure that the Joseph the viewers handed to him was one who wouldn’t lose him money. In Saturday’s final, the viewers will (allegedly) decide which of the three last survivors wins. In each previous programme, ALW has been permitted to choose to “save” one of the two candidates with the lowest votes, thereby jettisoning the other. When the oldest, smartest guy went out, he boldly claimed that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was going through his head. Norton deftly palmed that aside but I hope some alert showbiz reporter followed this up in case there was any visible fire behind the smoke.

Elsewhere, the youngest contestant eliminated took defeat the best. The boy who was clearly the best singer and had received consistent rave reviews from the judging panel was still eliminated as soon as Lloyd Webber had the chance to ditch him, even over the 17 year-old whom the lord knows is least equipped to play a West End company-leading run (ALW saved him also in the semi final, this time against the contest’s most natural song-and-dance man who had foolishly oversold his own case). The decision about the fine singer was right though. He was born to play the hero’s friend, especially one who perishes nobly in the second reel. “Nice guys finish last” baseball-player Leo Durocher is widely credited with coining and, while this one got to the top six, he was never going to win. True stars have a discernible bastard streak.

My choice for Joseph was the mouthy song-and-dance man, a natural mover who possessed the stage, not least because he was the only kid we saw all series who actually was sex on legs. But he lived perilously all through the knockout and finally succumbed last Saturday. The one who’s surely been topping the vote every week – apart from the bottom two, the results are never disclosed – is the Scots shrimp who stacks supermarket shelves but who has a fabulous voice and knows how to project his slim charm. He has the sex appeal of a gerbil which of course tells you a lot about the demographic of the show’s audience: middle-aged mums. It’s not a bad projection for the musical’s natural constituency either. I expect him to win it easily.

But Any Dream Will Do has had none of the fine detail and much greater showbiz realism of Musicality, the Channel 4 competition of a couple of years back that partially recast Chicago, which is the natural mother of this show (assuming Pop Idol is the father). Where are all the Musicality kids now, one wonders? Where indeed is Sheena Easton, whom Esther Rantzen’s vehicle launched into The Big Time almost thirty years ago? Showbiz is a tough racket and anybody who thinks that one night of glory is the precursor of a glorious career is living in cloud cuckoo land. As Bryan Protheroe said judiciously in the green room of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane when my song-and-dance man asked what his attitude would be to some competition winner playing alongside him on a West End stage, “I’d be very wary”.