So, over Christmas we learnt that ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ was not a flash in the pan. Andrew Lloyd Webber is to cast Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by public vote (programme title: ‘Any Dream Will Do’) and Simon Cowell is doing Grease (no title confirmed as yet).

The Joseph title fascinates me, because it shows once again the incredible advances these reality TV types have made in the field of semiotics. If you’d sat Lord Reith down sixty or so years ago and asked him what such random collections of words as ‘Strictly Dance Fever’ or ‘Celebrity Love Island’ alluded to, I doubt he’d have had a notion, other than he didn’t like the sound of them. These days, pop culture has granted them meanings which we accept without a murmur.

‘Any Dream Will Do’ however is taking things a lot further. Those titles I have mentioned can at least be explained by backwards reasoning. This one means nothing relevant at all. In the original song, you may remember, Joseph relates how he closed his eyes and drew back the curtain, in order to see for certain what he thought he knew. I am guessing the curtain is a metaphorical curtain, maybe the ‘curtain of sleep’. (Otherwise, the lyric has taken us to a point where Joseph is standing in front of an open window with his eyes shut wondering what he’s doing wrong.) Either way, he relates how far, far away someone was weeping but the world was sleeping, and (Or is it ‘but’? Or is it ‘therefore?’) any dream will do. My confusion over the appropriate conjunction reflects the fact that even in its original context this phrase seems meaningless.

In the context of a reality TV show, I imagine the title is meant to suggest the would-be Josephs' dreams of making it. Yet it doesn’t. What it suggests, if anything, is that the contestants are to be satisfied by the fulfilment of any dream – ‘It’s OK, Graham, I didn’t get to play Joseph, but the other week I was dancing with Yogi Bear and suddenly realised I was naked, so I’m chuffed with that.’ That would be a major format change.

I suppose what this choice of title shows is that some words, such as ‘dream’, are so powerful that their effect is felt regardless of context. I hope Simon Cowell is willing to test this theory to the max by naming his Grease show ‘Nazi Dream Butcher’.

Are you fooled into misty-eyed wonder by any sentence with the word 'dream' in? If so, you probably can't read this bit. Still, let us know!

I'm sorry I haven't been posting for a while. I've been in LA, which I'll tell you about soon no doubt, and this season of Christmas shows didn't inspire me to write. While I've been away, two of my esteemed fellow critics have been bantering about the nature of the job on my comments page, which might interest you if you've ever wondered how critics judge their own work. 

I wish anyone out there who's reading a fine Christmas, and while we're at it a Happy New Year. I'll be back to the grindstone with a Pirates of Penzance at the Orange Tree sometime next week. Pom de pom de pom...

I haven’t seen anyone comment on the fact that Catherine Tate is patron of the Royal Court Young Writers’ Festival. I sometimes enjoy Tate's show, and I know she has theatre credentials. Yet I’m baffled as to the reasoning. She doesn’t seem to me representative of youth or new playwriting. Previous patrons have included Kathy Burke and Ray Winstone, neither necessarily specific role models for a young playwright, but certainly cool people he or she would like to meet.

I doubt young people with the writing bug particularly want to meet Tate. The humour for which she is most famous – characterful non-punchlines recycled over and over again – is hardly something a youth with an aim to be the next Caryl Churchill is going to admire. Is it for publicity, or to attract a youthful audience to the festival? Again, my gran is the biggest Tate fan I know.

One explanation remains. Maybe the Royal Court are paying tribute to a woman who, through that ‘bovvered’ character, has shown the slews of middle class writers clogging up their young writer’s programme how to write the ‘relevant’ dialogue that new writing theatres love. Respect.

Who do you think would be the most irrelevant possible celebrity to be patron of the next Royal Court Young Writers’ Festival? Would it benefit from the blokish, very much alive charm of Richard Hammond? Does Ainsley Harriott’s dramatic experience make him an ideal figurehead? Let us know!

Mark Ravenhill, writing in the Guardian today about nativity plays, namedrops Dennis Kelly, the writer of Love and Money. He doesn't mention that play, but does reference Kelly's sitcom 'Coupling', playing on BBC3. In fact, Kelly's comedy is called Pulling. It is a sitcom about relationships which nicks its setup from Friends. Coupling was another sitcom about relationships which nicked its whole structure from Friends. Is this a good-natured jibe by Ravenhill, or just a felicitous mistake? Either way, I chuckled.

I went to the country for the latter half of the weekend, a welcome antidote to a hectic week that saw me post no blog entries at all. When I do that, you can be sure I’m extremely busy or ill. Why not send me something care of The Standard next time it happens, just to show you care? Consideration costs nothing.

What, where, who was I saying? Of course... Current Squeeze and I were on the way back to town yesterday, and she was talking to the taxi driver, as is her wont. It turned out that our amiable ex-army chauffeur was about to take part in his local church panto. I love amdram panto – it was the only theatre I saw as a child – and so joined the conversation, which rambled along pleasantly, until the cab driver said that he liked the films of Errol Flynn…

Incidentally, my father has only ever given me two bits of life advice. One was from Errol Flynn (‘shave every day’ – a good one), the other from Aristotle (‘Excellence is not an act but a habit’ – an annoying one). Do you like this new ‘aside’ effect? I do…

I didn’t object to this – I have no particular opinion on the films of Errol Flynn. The really enlightening bit was what he next said - and here I have to paraphrase. What he next said was that the reason he particularly preferred the films of Errol Flynn was because they maintained the use of expression that had characterised so many films from the silent era. I asked him to clarify, and he explained that in those films when a character was moody, he carried a constant, really moody expression, if he was a blithe sort, a happy expression et cetera. He didn't like more modern films, because they didn't have such good expressions.

I was speechless for a while, because it is a rare and sobering experience to realise that someone has an aesthetic sense that is not only different from your own, but at which you couldn’t even guess. He liked expressions. And why not? If he particularly liked a play I panned because of the expressions, who would I be to argue? As a critic, it makes you feel quite useless. More on this in a bit…

Have you got a baffling yet consistent way of assessing the efforts of artists? Do you know anyone who does? If so, let us know!

What was my other observation? Ah, yes. Sitcom actors on stage. Sheridan Smith is the undisputed major turn in Little Shop of Horrors. She is also the best thing in what seems a score of BBC sitcoms, chief among which is the reprehensible Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. It’s great watching actors from audience sitcoms on stage – they do things other actors don’t. Smith got a ton of laughs from reactionary gestures and twitches that the script hardly called for. Her Two Pints co-star Ralf Little did similar things, though not as well, in ‘On The Ceiling’ a year and a bit ago.

When Matthew ‘Chandler’ Perry came to London, his performance in Sexual Perversity in Chicago met with profound critical indifference. But I’ll always remember the deft look he flashed the audience at one point in the first scene. We laughed our socks off. I have no idea at what.

This commitment to entertain from moment to moment can backfire. In the very mediocre ‘An Hour and a Half Late’ recently, Mel Smith was unable to resist a mug to the audience when his wife asked him if he was having an affair. We all laughed at his discomfort. Then it turned out his character had never had anything approaching a dalliance– that fact was crucial to the play. It was confusing, but, like Kevin Pieterson’s hook shot, it’s difficult to discourage it for fear of compromising the man’s instinct.

For it’s a vital skill, and one that’s getting rarer and rarer in young actors particularly. Time was when there was a lot of comedy on our stages, and a lot of stage actors in studio sitcoms. The two fed off each other. The decline of both those genres is depriving us of a very particular type of performer, and I don’t think the world is a better place for it.

A couple of observations about this show, which I reviewed last night. First thing is that it was the most personally disappointing four star review I can remember giving. No fault of the show - it's just you sometimes can't help making comparisons. This time last year, the press night of Sunday in the Park with George, also produced by the Menier, also a cult favourite that one doubted would have wider appeal, was one of the most thrilling nights of my theatregoing life.

That production was not just dazzling, but opened my eyes anew to the virtues of Sondheim's show. Little Shop was a very fine production of what I think is a pretty limited musical. It highlights the range of situations a star rating can cover. I gave Sunday four stars in the Metro – that was a thrilling five star production compromised by the musical’s rather pointless second half. Little Shop was simply a show that definitely merited more than three stars.

I’ve become a big fan of star ratings, unlike a lot of critics. I slap the stars down at the beginning of a review, and then write. They represent my gut reaction, how much I enjoyed the show. When you have relatively few words to work with, as I usually do, the star rating can clear things up enormously. If you enjoyed a show but have caveats, for example, it gives you space for detailed criticism which otherwise might have given the wrong impression. I also don’t like playing the analyst in company, so when acquaintances politely ask me about a show, expecting to be bored by some critical insight, I like to just give the star rating. So that's useful.