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In the opening scene of Dreamgirls, the Dreamettes, a girl group from Chicago, take part in Amateur Night at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater, hoping for their big break. For the cast and artistic team of the revival of Dreamgirls, fantasy and reality converged in profound ways when the national tour was launched on that very stage.

"It was really special," says director Robert Longbottom. "So many people, including The Supremes and other famous girl groups, got their start at the Apollo. The theatre hasn't really been renovated, so you can feel all the people from all those decades. It's a beautiful old vaudeville palace, and it was thrilling for all of us to step on that stage and realize what that house had seen and what we were expected to deliver."

Expectations for Dreamgirls were high and went well beyond the walls of the Apollo. The 2006 movie was a huge success, and Michael Bennett's staging of the original 1981 Broadway production was heralded by many as groundbreaking. Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times that Bennett had "fashioned a show that strikes with the speed and heat of lightning," adding that he "keeps Dreamgirls in constant motion — in every conceivable direction — to perfect his special brand of cinematic stage effects (montage, dissolve, wipe)."