Effie White -- Does She Have To Be "Heavy?" — Page 5

I would say that nothing could be as exciting as watching Margo speaking in tongues, but I think it would get misinterpreted.

damn, you know I was listening to Linda's and Sheryl's voices again just to compare the two because I felt I came off a bit harsh in my assessment of Linda's voice but I still have to disagree. Sheryl has the better voice and interpretation of the two.

If we're talking about the same site (http://www.graiai.com/dreamgirls/ ), it offered several audio clips of live performances of the show, including the Tony clip and bootleg clips of Jennifer in Atlanta. I played them myself. Unless, they had written permission from John Breglio (attorney and executor of the Bennett estate), those clips were illegal.

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I didn't, but if I had I wouldn't have put them up on an internet site open to the public.

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arenita walker played Paradice in the brooklyn workshop!!

Does anyone actually have the Tony Awards Performance Ive never heard it before but from what I was told it was amazing!!!

i already have those

...the black church is where the young singers are for sure...I really think they should consider: Kiki Sheard. She is known to tear the house down with her vocals. And she is ...a healthy young lady.
Please check out her link below.
KiKi Sheard

^^^but can Fantasia act? And yes, KiKi can act her humble begins started just as Fantasia's.

Oh my EFFING GOD. JULIA???????? This is AMAZING NEWS!

She was one of the best Effies EVER in DREAMGIRLS (some critics felt she rivaled Holliday) and incidentally (full confession) is an old and dear friend of mine whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. I already had tickets to see this production anyway. I may have to make a second trip.

She's an incredible actress and has a powerhouse voice with a four octave range -- she's gonna do phenomenal things with that score. I cannot wait.

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I have no idea what she's saying now about her time in Dreamgirls, but the fact is that she regularly blew out her voice and as a result missed literally dozens of performances both in New York and subsequently during the LA run (which ended up losing money because of her many absences). Her attendance record was awful and there were weeks when she couldn't do more than 2 or 3 performances of her scheduled 8, especially towards the end of the run. When I saw her at a Saturday matinee shortly before she left the Broadway production, her voice sounded patchy and almost painfully raw -- it was nevertheless an incredible performance -- and from what I heard she had missed the Friday night performance the night before and went onto miss the Saturday night performance that evening.

To be fair, every Effie who ever did the role missed performances -- it's simply too demanding to sing Effie in the manner that Holliday did 8 times a week, month after month. By the end of the Broadway run, Bennett had installed 4 separate understudies for the role because it wasn't unusual at any given time for the main Effie to be out and for one or two of the understudies to also blow out their voices trying to handle the role in replacement (I actually saw a third understudy -- a young Kecia Lewis who was 19 at the time, fresh out of HS for the Performing Arts -- one of the times I went back to see the show late in the run; everyone else was out on vocal rest).

Ideally, Effie should be treated the same way Evita is (as well as Marie Christine and the lead roles in the The Apple Tree) with a separate actress doing the role at matinees to give the main Effie a bit of relief.

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Not funny at all. I'd love to hear what her voice would do with that score. And she's improved as an actress over the years, so she might be even be credible in that department. If it ever happens, I'll be hopping on a plane to see her wherever she's doing it.

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