Dreamgirls Appreciation Thread — Page 2

Not too long ago in a different thread, someone (Margo?) after describing the unprecedented audience reaction to Dreamgirls (standing on seats and literally running up the aisles toward the stage) questioned whether or not we would ever see that type of thing again. That got me thinking as to why exactly it HAD happened. After some thought, I've come up with a little bit of a theory. It has to do with the timing in conjunction with gay history. We had already seen Judy's concert at Carnegie Hall, which is generally recognized as something of a 'coming out party' for New York gay men, and the rise of Bette Midler's shows just as the gay rights revolution was really taking off. And when Bette's shows transferred to Broadway, the gay men went with her - almost to show they could have their fun in public, not just in private (The Continental Baths.)

The early Eighties was when everything seemed to have fallen into place, and gay men were enjoying the most freedom publically they ever had. AIDS was right around the corner, but until then, it was party time!

And that's when Dremagirls hit. Obviously, not a 'gay' show. BUT, it was directed by an out gay 'hero' and dealt with the Supremes (oh, please - don't even go there.) Frankly, it could be described as the best drag show I've ever seen

SO, after having all this development, here we had a legitimate Broadway show, that seemed to fall so much in our territory. The fact that it dealt so strongly with a civil rights theme played a part - as did the fact that the leading lady was the absolute DEFINITION of the ostracized, over-talented, larger-than-life DIVA. AND, we felt - more than ever in our history - the ability to let our fabulous adoration OUT - and judgement be damned!

Now, I'm not saying this is the reason it occurred, but I do wonder if it played a part. Having had the priveledge of being one of those people on their seat, I can tell you from observation that gay men were, shall we say, liberally represented in the audience. And why not? We know greatness when we see it If it's true at all, however, I'm not sure we WILL se that again - at least not for quite a while.

Anyway, just a thought. Also, along these lines. I remember thinking then, and I still do, that 'Family' should be adopted as the gay national anthem. I know that 'I Am What I Am' came along, but that has so much to do with SELF-empowerment - I've always wished we embraced a bit more of the community aspect of our lives.

I just re-read Frank Rich's review of the original production and it's a fascinating account of what DREAMGIRLS meant to the art form and it kind of saddens me that the torch still hasn't been passed to anyone. Will we ever see the likes of Michael Bennett again?
Frank Rich's Review

Updated On: 9/1/04 at 10:12 PM

The thing is that "Michael Bennetts" (unfortunately for us) aren't grown, they're made, by which I mean, for the most part, the great director/choreographers had talent, but became "great" as a result of working closely with older, more experienced masters who took their innate skills and abilities and helped them hone and develop their craft. This doesn't really happen anymore.

Bennett was always special, even as a kid in Buffalo. He left home as a teenager (I believe he was 15) and joined a road tour of "West Side Story," getting a chance to dance the choreography of his lifetime idol Jerome Robbins. He kicked around as a dancer on Broadway (he debuted as a chorus boy in "Subways are For Sleeping" at 18, and also was in "Bajour" with Chita Rivera, "Here's Love" and other shows) and on the tv dance show "Hullabaloo" (where he met Donna McKechnie).

He made his debut as a choreographer at the impossibly young age of 23 with "A Joyful Noise" (that featured among others, Baayork Lee and Tommy Tune in the dance chorus) and, the next year did "Henry Sweey Henry" (with Lee, Priscilla Lopez, Bob Avian). Both shows flopped, but Bennett received a Tony nomination for his choreography for both and everyone on Broadway knew he was a choreographer to watch. He finally got his first hit the next year with the Tony-winning "Promises, Promises" (again with Lee, McKechnie, Kelly Bishop, Graciela Daniele, Margo Sappington, et al). He was only 25, with 3 Tony nods for his choreography, but he wanted to direct.

A few years later, Hal Prince tapped him to stage the musical numbers in "Company." Prince, who had begun his career as a go-fer for the legendary George Abbott, became his stage manager shortly afterwards, then the producer of Abbott's shows while still in his 20's, and understood paying dues and learning on the job. He had learned everything there was to know about producing and directing a show from being Mr. Abbott's number #2 man through a long succession of hit shows with Abbott and others (Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, West Side Story, Fiorello, Forum) and finally branched out as a director in his own right with "She Loves Me" and "Cabaret."

Bennett clearly was one of the most gifted choreographers to come along in a generation, and by working with Prince and Sondheim on "Company," he finished his "education" by being part of a creative team developing a landmark musical where the book, score, and design broke new ground in the musical form. The next year, when the same team re-assembled for "Follies," Bennett was credited as "co-director" with Prince for the project -- Prince developed and directed the book scenes and Bennett created the extraordinary musical numbers (including the famous "Mirror number" -- "Who's That Woman" -- that everyone I know that saw it, considers the single greatest piece of staging that they've ever seen).

Anyway, without going through Bennett's entire resume, it's clear that without his experience with "Company" and "Follies," he'd probably never have had the technique, knowledge, craft and vision that led him to be able to create "A Chorus Line" a few years later. He was always a genius in terms of dance numbers, but it was working with Prince and Sondheim (who said that Bennett's only problem was that he wanted every single number to "stop the show," not a bad instinct necessarily, except it ends up getting in the way of the storytelling in a musical -- something Sondheim probably learned in his time working with Hammerstein and Robbins) that gave him the whole picture of all the elements that go into creating a great show -- book, lyrics, score, design, performance, direction AND choreography.

Most of the great stage director/choreographers only fully "got" the whole picture after working under the wing of a more established colleague. Prince had Abbott and Robbins; Bennett had Prince; Fosse had Abbott AND Robbins (also a prodigy like Bennett, he got his first big break on Broadway choreographing "Pajama Game" at 26, then "Damn Yankees" and "New Girl In Town" for Abbott and then co-choreographing "Bells Are Ringing" with Robbins, before getting his first directing break with the Tony-winning best musical "Redhead"); Tommy Tune had Bennett (he was Bennett's co-choreographer on "Seesaw" before embarking on his directing career); Graciela Daniele had Bennett and Fosse, as did Cilento and Reinking.

There are the exceptions like Robbins and DeMille and Gower Champion, Jack Cole (one of Fosse's major influences) and Michael Kidd who had been amazing dancers and learned to be great director/choreographers somehow in the course of their dance careers (actually, I think Robbins sprung out fully developed from the head of Zeus -- he apparently was just a genius from the beginning). But, most others, who certainly had a gift for staging to begin with, refined their talents working with others.

There were skills and techniques and "rules" passed down from one generation of directors to another, tools and experience and know-how that were imparted on the job that allowed gifted and talented young artists to become the theatrical visionaries for the next generation. One must learn and fully master the existing "rules" before one can break them and forge a new path for the future -- Prince would never been able to re-invent the genre with "Cabaret" and "Company" had he not spent so many years with Abbott learning the "basics" with "Damn Yankees" and Pajama Game"; "A Chorus Line" and "Dreamgirls" would have never happened without Bennett's experience on "Company" and "Follies."

What's happened in the last 20 years is that tragedy struck in the 80's -- Champion died of a heart attack in '80, Bennett died at 44 from AIDS in '87, Fosse died at 60 of a heart attack two months after Bennett. Tune left the pressures (financial and other) of Broadway for Vegas a decade ago.

The tradition of mentorship and passing down the lessons and legacies of the past was cut off, because the masters of the craft had somehow seemingly disappeared all at once. While Daniele and Stroman and others have done their best to carry on in this vacuum and create visions of their own, they don't have the benefit of the counsel of the great innovators that preceded them (Prince, Fosse, Bennett et al had Robbins, Abbott etc to come in and look over their productions out-of-town, offer advice, help re-staging, and insight into fixing problems, and then they themselves became renowned as "show doctors" for Tune, Daniele, etc...; the current generation of directors have no one).

Death claimed so many of the great innovative stage artists of the last generation (amazingly, Bennett would be only 61 years old, if he were alive today) and the American theatre has never really recovered. I've often wondered what the state of the modern musical would be had Bennett and Fosse, Tune and others had been around still operating at the height of their powers during the late 80's and the 90's -- would the so-called mega-musical have completely taken over the artform? Would dance and story and showstoppers emanating from character and plot have proven to be more popular and effective (or equally so) than chandeliers and moving barrades and helicopters? Would Jennifer Holliday and Donna McKechnie and Loretta Devine and Cleavant Derricks and Priscilla Lopez and so many others ended up with bigger stage careers and been part of many more memorable theatrical moments? Would Bennett have finally figured out how to create a musical where every single number stopped the show (and would Fosse have figured out a way to top him?) Would the entire artform be in a very different place than it is right now -- all revivals and jukebox musicals and movie adaptations? Would these men have set the bar even higher than they had managed to in their all-to-brief careers?

We'll never know.

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Updated On: 9/2/04 at 01:17 AM

Margo - what you have said reminds me of reading Mandelbaum's analysis of Bennett's career and the Fosse Biography "All His Jazz." It does seem apparent when you look at recent history that we seemed to have reached a stumbling block in the mid-eighties - and one that no one has found a way yet to cross over. Reinking and Cilento seem more in the mold of ardent followers rather than creators, and Stroman seems talented with no sense of what to do with it in the long run.

By the way - I loved the way you listed the elements that go into a great show, and ended with, "AND choreography." No one could ever say you don't read the other threads

I think Jerry Mitchell's work on Hairspray and The Full Monty was terrific. Hairspray is in constant motion, and in The Full Monty, he created wonderful dances for non-dancers. Moreover, Mitchell has had a similar career trajectory to Bennett. He danced in an Agnes DeMille show (Brigadoon), a George Balanchine/Donald Saddler/Peter Martins show, under the direction of George Abbott (On Your Toes), assisted Bennett on Scandal, assisted Jerome Robbins on Jerome Robbins' Broadway, and danced in a Tommy Tune show (The Will Rogers Follies). This year, he's choreographing La Cage and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but I believe there are projects that he's attached to direct and choreograph, like the intended West Side Story revival - and wasn't there talk of him doing the same for a Dreamgirls revival? I'm very interested to see how he does as a director/choreographer. If there is anyone who has the proper pedigree, it's him.

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Saw the original cast once and saw the 87 revival twice. The original cast was amazing but I thought the revival cast was quite special.

How lucky to have been able to call the box office fifteen minutes before a performance and find out that tix were available and just run over and see DREAMGIRLS. No where else on earth!

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florence ballard never did become a nurse but you're right macgruder, the character of effie did become a nurse in an early workshop of the show and their was a character played by estelle getty in the workshop. nell carter played effie in the early versions and then was replaced by cheryl barnes when nell signed on to star in "gimme a break".

Apparently they're just very protective about this piece in general. I was very excited to get the Tony Broadway tape because 'And I am Telling You' was going to be on it. Then it was yanked before they released it.

How does someone get a copy of those Tony's, so we can see the great miss jennifer live? I saw on the Dreamgirls website (linked above) they have the audio of the performance...which sounds amazing, but some of us like to watch perfection in action by miss holliday.

I guess besides going to the museum of tv, there is no way to watch it.

I'd also like to add that the show's very title Dreamgirls was taken from the title of the memoirs of Mary Wilson (Dreamgirl & Supreme Faith), the only Supreme who was originally a primette and also stayed with the group after Diana was replaced by Jean Terrell.
Flo was also the original lead singer for the primettes for their first hit "Buttered Popcorn". When she left the Supremes, she was unceromoniously replaced by Cindy Birdsong, one of Patti Labelle's Blue Belles.

Updated On: 9/2/04 at 01:25 PM

Actually, Wilson got the title of her memoir from the show (her book came out in the mid-80's). While Ross and Gordy have always refused to discuss the show (Ross stormed out of a performance before Act I was even over), Wilson has always said in interviews how much she loved the show and how accurate much of it is to the actual Supremes story.

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The first mention I ever saw of the show was in Liz Smith's column about a year or so before it opened where she touted "Look out for Michael Bennett's new show heading to Broadway called 'Big Dreams.'"

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This is from the site that Margo linked earlier:

Tom Eyen penned a play called The Dirtiest Show In Town and, in 1975, he adapted it as a musical with Henry Krieger supplying the music. In the show, Nell Carter delivered a song called “Can You See Me?” which inspired Eyen and Krieger to work on an original show. Eyen wanted to show the world through the eyes of back-up singers and Krieger wanted to do a show using black characters.

Project #9 (as it was titled in its planning stages) was originally conceived for Nell Carter, Marion Ramsey and Leata Galloway. The show was about three women with very different personalities (the beautiful one, the difficult one, and the funny one) who were roommates and friends in the early 70s.