Lyceum, Sheffield – until 19th March 2022
Reviewed by Alison Beaumont
5*****
Dreamgirls is a musical set in the early 1960’s to mid 70’s and follows the rise of 3 women Effie, Deena and Lorrell who have formed a group called the Dreamettes. They enter a talent show and are offered an opportunity to be the backing singers for James Thunder Early. Curtis their manager gradually takes over the Dreamettes who he rebrands as the Dreams and pushes Effie out of the spotlight to focus on Deena. While the Dreams rise to fame without Effie she is left struggling bringing up her daughter. A few years later Effie starts to rise to fame in a solo career. The manager of the Dreams tries to destroy Effie’s new career.
Well what can I say about this musical other than WOW WOW WOW. I will start with the best and most amazing part for me and that has to be when Effie White played by Nicole Raquel Dennis sang “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”, what a singer, vocals out of this world, I was mesmerised by this performance, she definitely gave Whitney Houston a run for her money with this rendition. The audience certainly felt the same and she even had some members of the audience on their feet showing their appreciation during this song. Absolutely by far the best moment. This to me was when I really felt enraptured by the musical. I was left wondering how the Second Act could possibly match up. I was not left disappointed.
The blow away moment for me in the Second Act was “Listen”, recorded by Beyonce. This song always gets me emotionally and brings a tear to my eye as it personally holds a special place in my heart. This was a duet with Effie and Deena Jones (Natalie Kassanga), Nicole yet again gave an outstanding performance as did Natalie, could not fault them one bit.
The show has lots of emotion which is portrayed exceptionally well by everyone and the story is well performed.
The choreography for the male dancers was good and they certainly did not disappoint playing their parts, this all added to the great performance.
The Dreamgirls (reprise) where Effie joins the Dream girls Deena, Lorrell (Paige Peddie) and Michelle (Brianna Ogunbawo) was the perfect end to a perfect show.
I really feel that everyone deserves a mention in this review as they all played equally good parts and the bond between everyone certainly made this show run smoothly and really enjoyable for the audience. There is nothing I could fault.