Word: cleavant
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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...
...Cleavant Derricks, who won a Tony in the show-business musical Dreamgirls, finds a kind of heroism as Big Deal's hapless gang leader, a onetime boxer who keeps getting knocked down by life and rising to scrabble anew. His Dreamgirls partner Loretta Devine brings off an almost impossible mix as a housemaid duped into abetting the robbery: she is sexy, touchingly innocent, screamingly funny and, perhaps most astonishing in a feminist era, inoffensively but decisively dumb...
...galvanic as Holliday is Cleavant Derricks as a slam-bang comic belter sadly beached by new musical tides. A superb choreographer, Bennett is surprisingly skimpy on dances. Only one number, Steppin ' to the Bad Side, fully displays his stylish percussive mastery. But then, the entire evening marches to his drumming beat...
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