I think Taral Hicks is a wonderful contender for Deena Jones. She has a very high falseto soprano voice.Plus she can act but I'm still very much pulling for Kelly Rowland.
There are a lot of terrific ideas floating around this thread! (And a few not so good ones as well).
I caught Frenchie Davis in the recent West Coast tour of DREAMGIRLS. She was terrible. She had no grasp of the character, and looked exceedingly uncomfortable on the stage.
As far as modifications to the piece, I think a huge amount of DREAMGIRLS will transfer really well to film. Bennett's staging consciously aped film techniques -- most notably, the montage. However, I think the score should be augmented for the film. A common critique of DREAMGIRLS on stage is that there's too much action, at the expense of character development. I think the film could solve this, by quick cutting all of the expository scenes and the use of actual montage, and allowing more time to focus on the six lead characters.
