Word: broadways
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...exactly 25 years prior to that date, Dec. 20, 1981, that Dreamgirls opened on Broadway. Conceived and directed by Michael Bennett, the show was a critical and popular smash. It won six Tony awards, for Book, Choreography, Lighting, Actor (Ben Harney), Actress (Jennifer Holliday) and Featured Actor (Cleavant Derricks). The prizes it didn't take - for Best Musical, Score, Direction and Featured Actress - all went to Nine, itself quite a suave piece of musical theater but not in the class of the Bennett extravaganza...
...Dreamgirls ran for 1,521 performances, closing in Aug. 1985, but its influence spread far beyond the confines of the Majestic Theatre. The show sent the clearest signal yet that blacks could anchor a Broadway hit. Its defiant anthem, "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," has been sung countless times over the years in the Amateur Night competitions at Harlem's Apollo Theatre, as well as on American Idol...
...shown at the Martinez, do not make a movie. There's no telling how the entire film will play. But the Friday-night tastes were savory. It was apparent that the film, designed by John Myhre (X Men, Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha with special lighting by Broadway legend Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, looks fabulous. Choreographer Fatima Robinson put the non-dancing actors through brilliant moves. As someone who saw the original show five times, I would not have thought that a movie could have equaled my Dreamgirls memory, but what I saw might just be its cinematic equal...
DIED. Cy Feuer, 95, legendary producer, with partner Ernest Martin, of Broadway musicals that defined the genre, including Guys and Dolls and the Tony-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; in New York City. Known during the musical's golden age as the creative half of "the King and Cy," Feuer oversaw every detail of his shows, sometimes taking the director's seat. Famously tough--he feuded with George S. Kaufman, Bob Fosse and Frank Loesser--he discovered Julie Andrews, whose career he launched with 1954's The Boy Friend, and helped turn I Love Paris...
Shame on this revival. The 1954 Richard Adler and Jerry Ross musical isn't even a paid-up member of the Broadway pantheon. Yet the story (about labor problems and romantic entanglements at a pajama factory) is so effortlessly engaging; its songs so consistently fresh, tuneful and organic to the plot; and its two stars, Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli O'Hara, so utterly convincing as romantic leads that you come away believing that doing a musical is the easiest thing in the world. (Until you have to sit through Lestat.) The bad news is that the show closes...