The Boys in the Photograph focuses on a local soccer team in Belfast. (Bruce Monk/Manitoba Theatre Centre)

Mirvish Productions has dropped Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat from the Toronto theatre season and will instead mount the new Andrew Lloyd Webber/Ben Elton musical The Boys in the Photograph.

The show, which had its world premiere in Winnipeg with the Manitoba Theatre Centre, is to go on stage in Toronto this October.

Dropping Joseph frees up the Royal Alex theatre for a run of The Boys in the Photograph, theatre impresario David Mirvish said.

"This new production is immensely impressive. The show has just ended its Winnipeg run, having had a great engagement, playing to capacity crowds who stood and cheered at the end of every performance. As soon as we saw it we knew we had to find a way to bring it to Toronto," he said in a news release.

Tony LePage and Erica Peck perform in The Boys in the Photograph at the John Hirsh Theatre in Winnipeg. (Bruce Monk/Manitoba Theatre Centre)

Joseph, also a Lloyd Webber show, is likely to return in a future season.

The Boys in the Photograph is the story of the members of a local soccer team in Belfast in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the men and their girlfriends are drawn into Northern Ireland's sectarian violence, while others stand aside wanting only to be allowed to live and love in peace.

Lloyd Webber first tackled this subject matter in The Beautiful Game but he and British writer Elton completely reworked it for this new production, with a more upbeat ending.

The Winnipeg show featured an all-Canadian cast, including Erica Peck, Richard McMillan and Tony LePage.

Elton, who wrote the book and lyrics, directs the production.

The Beautiful Game played for a year in London's West End from September 2000 until September 2001.