PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Dreamgirls — Of Dreams and Dreamettes
By Harry Haun
November 23, 2009
Meet the first-nighters at the Apollo Theatre opening of the new touring production of Dreamgirls.
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There are dreams of white Christmases and dreams of R&B stardom, and on Nov. 22 the traditional Main Stem first-nighters were torn about which dream to follow, although neither option led to a true Broadway opening as we've come to know it. Irving Berlin's White Christmas merely resumed seasonal performances at the Marquis for the second consecutive year (albeit, with a new cast), and its celebrants hoisted the holiday cheer a block from the theatre at Bond 45. It was different uptown — 80 blocks uptown — where a road-company revival of Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen's Dreamgirls kicked off with a month's gig at the Apollo before heading out to the hinterlands.
The famed and fabled Harlem theatre is where the story of Dreamgirls starts and stops, so the site-specific aspects of this actual overlap were downright italic.
"We are absolutely thrilled," declared Jonelle Procope, president of the Apollo. "It's John Breglio's genius that it should be here where it happened. It's absolutely fitting. I think we have a smash on our hands, and we're going to be launching the careers of some new artists — in keeping with the Apollo's legacy."
She sees more theatre ahead for the Apollo. "Part of our programming plan for 2010-11 is to do more music theatre, to remount some of wonderful old musicals."
Producer Breglio is the executor of the estate of Michael Bennett, the director and Tony-winning choreographer of this 1981 musical, which, now that it can be told, pretends to tell the saga of a R&B girl-group trio and how they were made and shaped into The Supremes by Motown kingpin Berry Gordy. Now, as then, these are the only real-life reference points that parallel the backstabbing among back-ups.
The Dreamettes — Effie White (Moya Angela), Deena Jones (Syesha Mercado) and Lorrell Robinson (Adrienne Warren) show up for Amateur Night at the Apollo, and their careers take off. Of course, their old-school manager, Marty (Milton Craig Nealy), is left at the starting gate in favor of a fast-talking, two-faced empire-builder, Curtis Taylor Jr. (Chaz Lamar Shepherd), who slims down their name to The Dreams. The reducing doesn't stop there: he sentences Effie, the stout, talented lead diva, to the background and brings front and center the curvy, less talented Deena — eventually sacking Effie altogether and bringing in a sexy substitute, Michelle Morris (Margaret Hoffman).
The fallout of this action is one of the most heart-wrenching Act I curtain-numbers ever — Effie's "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." It was Tony fodder for Jennifer Holliday and Oscar fodder for Jennifer Hudson, and it should rake in lots of awards for Angela on the road.
If her tumultuous curtain call is any barometer, you can take that to the bank. Angela had trouble holding it together when she walked out to the thunderous ovation. "Absolutely," she later admitted. "It just felt like a big hug. You know that there were some original people out there, then some people who had never seen it and people who had seen it originally. It just felt so warm. I broke down. I had a moment."
A year of raw emotions lies ahead of her. "I'll just pace myself and get a lot of sleep. I've been on tour before, so I know what it's like to have to adjust to different cities and climates and just everything around me so I'll keep my plan."
As the girl who would — or could — be Diana Ross, Mercado gives a sympathetic account of the role. "I can really relate to Deena, coming from nothing and having a dream and having a vision and really going after it, working hard, surrounding herself with people who are really positive and who really believe in her dream. Just like Deena, I was raised in the projects. I didn't have a lot of money growing up. I didn't have a mother who sewed all my dresses, but I did have a mother who supported me in whatever I did."
Even Shepherd gets generous applause for his ruthless wheeler-dealer. "It's easy to play Curtis because I understand it. I don't necessarily — personally — agree with his bad side because I think it could be done another way, but I still understand a bad side. Most successful businesses in the world have a bad side. And we're dichotomous — we have good, we have bad. The easy out for bad behavior is to say 'I'm making a business decision.'"
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Like most of the actors in the show, he loved playing the Apollo. "All those years we did the original production at the Imperial, we pretended we were at the Apollo. Now, to actually be at the Apollo, with all those spirits of all those wonderful singers and performers who were there before us — it's indescribable. I can't even find the word. I wish there was a word. We're all floating. Nobody walks in that theatre. Everybody floats. We're so full and excited and proud."
As the live-wire rocker, James "Thunder" Early, Chester Gregory finds him self again doing a role Eddie Murphy played on film. (He originated the role of Donkey during the out of town of Shrek.) "I was actually at the New York opening of 'Dreamgirls' so I was in the room with Eddie that night. It's a ironic to be playing this role now.
"I have a lot of fun playing this role. I sorta consider my interpretation of James 'Thunder' Early as a gumbo mix of Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, James Brown and Otis Redding. What I like about this character — our director, Robert Longbottom, gave me freedom to do my own interpretation with it so every night it's a little bit different. It's never the same. You have this little bit of improv, like a little bit every night where I play with the audience, stuff like that."
Longbottom, who also choreographed the production with Shane Sparks, said the famous fumes of Apollo affected his whole cast. "It was thrilling. Those kids came to work every day, and it was, like, 'This is our heritage. We belong here.' I love this company. They were so hungry to learn and embody these characters. It was really a good time. I'm so proud of them."
Bill Condon, who caught the opening night of the original Dreamgirls and subsequently directed the movie version, was Longbottom's special opening-night guest. "He had a good time, too. He was very supportive."
The site of the after-party was also a first for first-nighters — the no-less-historic Riverside Church. "Where are the sacraments?" asked one thirsty guest on arriving.
Slick-domed Harry Belafonte with baseball cap and walking cane, admitted it was a little like coming home to his theatre-of-operations. "I played the Apollo quite a bit in my early years," he said in that famous wind-tunnel wheeze of his.
The shorter male half of the Power Couple of the Evening was, improbably, the patriarch of "Star Wars," George Lucas. When asked bluntly what on earth was he doing at the Apollo launch of Dreamgirls, he wordlessly pointed to the elegant lady beside him — the financial correspondent for "Good Morning America" as well as the president of Ariel Investments, LLC, a Chicago investment firm managing more than $3 billion in assets — Mellody Hobson. "Yeah," said Lucas when we got his drift, "I go where she goes." (They're amigos, it seems.)
Lucas' latest, for which he is co-writer and executive producer, has been shot and is in the final throes of editing. "It's called 'Red Tails,' and it's an airman movie — about African-American fighter pilots during World War II. Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard and a lot of young kids — teenagers, basically — star."
With Lucas prominently in attendance, can C3PO be far behind? Actually, yes, it accidentally turns out. Anthony Daniels, who provided the snooty clip-Brit voice of the "Star Wars" gold gizmo, was present as well, but he would have you believe that this alignment of celebrities was mere kismet, that he doesn't make a practice of stalking his cinematic creator. "It's just The Force working in the right way," he offered. "I'm very glad to see George. It's always great to see him."
Star Wars: The Concert was what brought Daniels to town. "It's the 'Star Wars' story from beginning to end, with me and the Royal London Philharmonic Orchestra. We've just finished, and we fly to Canada tomorrow to do it in Ottawa and Toronto. But we'll be back — hopefully next year to a central New York location like Madison Square Garden. It's an arena show so I'm talking up to 25,000 people a night."
He has yet to make his acting debut here. "The nearest thing I ever got to acting in New York was actually performing on Broadway in Duffy's Square," he admitted. "I brought, in my gold costume, dark M&Ms to this planet. They did a whole big stage thing two or three years ago. It was the only time I'd been on Broadway, sadly."
A couple of theatre scribes will be waiting for that debut with sabres drawn because of a slight tiff/misunderstanding at the after-party where Daniels banished the press from the press table like they were crashers (among them, Hollywood Reporter's Roger Friedman) so he could sit next to, and chat up, Joan Rivers.
Tony winner Lillias White, who was Effie in the tour version that played the Ambassador and in a 2001 one-night-only Broadway-benefit, adjusted her current eight-performance-a-week agenda to check out the new girl. These days you can find her playing the mother of Fela!, opening Nov. 23 at the Eugene O'Neill ("Be there!" she charged).
The original's Tony-nominated Deena Jones, Sheryl Lee Ralph, hit the red carpet in front of the Apollo in full star-strutting style, looking remarkably untouched by the past 28 years. "Lemme tell ya," she bloomed at the compliment, "they say that good black don't crack, and I refuse to age. Whenever I see the word age, all I can say is 'Never.' I will be young forever, especially in my heart."
The flamboyance faded inside the theatre, outside of camera range, and she glazed up a bit when two strangers introduced themselves. "I always talk about Tom Eyen when I'm doing my performances," she explained, "and, as soon as I came into the Apollo, his niece and nephew came up to me and mentioned his name. That would be Tom's spirit, Tom saying to me, 'I'm right here with you tonight.'"
She also got a big hug from Dick Scanlan, the Tony-nominated author of Thoroughly Modern Millie. (She was his Muzzy Van Hossmere in that show.)
"I have a bunch of stuff going, but I never say anything until it's all official," Scanlan remarked sagely. Is it sinkable or unsinkable? I asked, full steam ahead. "We hope it's unsinkable — we're working on it. We did a workshop in Denver last year and hope to do a big production next year in a theatre like the Denver Theatre Center."
Graying with distinction but wearing new arm candy, John Patrick Shanley revealed that he has a new opus in the pipeline: "I'm working on this play Pirate. It's about terrorism. It has to do with the Somali pirates and other things as well. It's partially about that recent incident, but it's about more than that."
Krieger's partner, actor Robert Joy, sported a nice tan for the occasion. "I guess I do because I just flew in from California, but I never think about getting sun in California," he confessed. "I'm working on a television series, 'CSI: New York.' I play their medical examiner so it has been a long-time gig out there for me."
It was his first time at the Apollo. "We just walked through backstage with some gifts for the cast, then we took this circuitous route up to stage left and walked out into where the red-covered seats are — my heart just started beating so fast. It's, like, 'Oh, my God! Now I'm in the Apollo.' Having come through the stage door — there was something very special about that — and then to end up out front. I'm very excited."
Before Krieger found his musical calling, he was a publicist, and many of his acts played the Apollo — so this Dreamgirls premiere was a sentimental journey home for him — or at least he had come full circle and out another end. During their tour backstage, the composer didn't show his partner his publicity office because he didn't have one. "I was a floater. I was walking all the time going from desk to desk."
The physical building hadn't changed that much for Krieger. "It feels very much the same, but that was 1971, so the whole inner atmosphere — the environment — was so '70s, so different then. As we live history together, there are definite reasons why people gravitate to a new style." It was, he said, a real heart-squeeze to be back.
Dreamgirls' duly-taxed designer William Ivey Long brought a classy contingent of, well, class to the opening, including Carolina Herrera, proving anew designers hang out together. "Who else knows the pain?" he reasoned.
"I'm a very good friend of William's — that's why I'm here," Herrera volunteered. "And also this is my first visit to the Apollo Theatre. It opened 75 years ago, and I'm just now getting here. I'm very excited to be here tonight for this smashing success."
"Let's hope because my fingers are so bruised," cracked Long. As well they should be, having dreamed up 580 different creations for this production. Factor that in with the 200 wigs that Paul Huntley supplied, and you have a madhouse backstage. "It was very tough," Huntley allowed, "because there is not very much room backstage. We have an army of seven hairdressers working back there."
The glamorous commotion reaches a zenith during a fast photo-shoot where the three title players zipped through two costumes down to their sequined selves.
"The first show I ever did was Nine," Long recalled, "and we shared a wall with Dreamgirls — the Richard Rodgers Theatre and the Imperial Theatre. I used to run across to see Dreamgirls with Woody Shelp, the great milliner, and we'd hang out in the wig room, so I've been a fan of Dreamgirls from the preview period on." He even got first dibs on any revival from producer Breglio.
By intermission, another of Long's guests — Lee Radziwill — was won over, without much of a struggle, to Herrera's thinking. "I adore it," she trilled. "It's so special, so fantastic! William's one of my very closest friends so I'm so thrilled for him." It was not her first time to the Apollo — "but I haven't been here for a long time."
As the two ladies moved from the sidewalk and headed back into the theatre, a homeless woman approached them, hand outstretched asking for a handout. The designer's husband, Reinaldo Herrara, ponied up some spare change.
Also in attendance were Mamma Mia!'s Harriet D. Foy with Marva Hicks from "Star Trek: Voyager," Mario Lopez, West Side Story conductor Patrick Vaccariello, Bennett's long-time dance-assistant Bob Avian, New York Beacon News entertainment editor Don Thomas, CBS News' Richard Schlesinger and former Time-Warner chairman and now Apollo kingpin Dick Parsons.