Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Musical Masterpiece
Dreamgirls is a masterpiece, period. It's songs spin from Motown recitative to powerhouse ballads. It's an ambitious score that evokes an era of American music history where true talent was discovered and music was well-crafted. Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen captured the heart and soul of Motown and gave it dramatic context. Seth Rudetsky commands this challenging score masterfully. He keeps it clipping along and maintains a tightness over a score that is so well-written it seems like improvisation.Dreamgirls is a showbiz musical and it seems appropriate that this new recording is live. The excitement, and uncontrollable energy of both performers and audience is palpable. Each performer is in great voice and hits the ground running with the music. Heather Headly, Audra McDonald and Lillias White all offer fiery performances that create real people, a world, and conflict -- this recording achieves what most cast recordings only dream of -- and something the original recording failed to do, because of it's truncation. The handful of songs captured for the original cast recording stood on their own. However, with this new recording, the songs come flying out of emotionally charged song/scenes and become part of a larger dramatic tapestry -- allowing them a fuller glory. Fans of the original Jennifer Holliday version -- do not fear. No one can be Jennifer Holliday -- and as any good actor should, Lillias White makes Effie all her own. There is something entirely new and unique offered here and it is successful. The original recording left fans hungry for more in the form of a fuller preservation of the score -- and so does this recording -- but now we beg for a major revival. Henry Krieger is a phenomenal talent and it is shameful that his work does not play Broadway more often. Perhaps this recording will push people to investigate his work and to take another look at SideShow, which was unfortunatley rushed off the Broadway stage all too swiftly.
Rating: - This is how it should have been
Just like the original cast album of Follies, the original cast album of Dreamgirls was sadly lacking. This was crying out for a 2 LP (in those days) release. It has happily been rectified with a topnotched cast with some of the strongest leading ladies in musical theater (Heather Hadley (Aida), Audra McDonald (Carousel, Ragtime, Marie Christine) Lillias White (The Life) and great supporting cast of Norm Lewis, Billy Porter, Tamara Tunie, James Stovall and Darius de Haas. Even some of the brief cameo roles were filled by some of Broadway and recordings newest stars Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, Malcome Gets, Brad Oscar, Patrick Wilson and Brian Stokes Mitchell. This is what the album should have been the first time and it is a shame that the original cast did not have the opportunity to record the whole show. This live in concert recording thankfully is not over powered with applause and has enough dialogue to connect the story and the songs together. I had the good fortune of seeing the original cast on Broadway. Jennifer Holiday still brings chills for me with her powerhouse rendition of And I Am Tellling I'm Not Going. I then saw her 20 years later singing the song with the same goosebump effect. Saying this Lillias White comes in a close second with her rendition. Even if you are not a collector of Broadway cast recordings this is one CD that should be part of your permanment collection
Rating: - A Masterpiece Complete At Last!
DREAMGIRLS is simply the best, most exciting, and most moving backstage musical to appear since GYPSY in 1959.The original Broadway cast album was meticulously produced at the very end of the LP era with the flawless original cast, but for obscure reasons (having to do with LP sound quality) only a fraction of the score made it onto record. Anyone who saw DREAMGIRLS on Broadway or elsewhere knows how much great material is missing from that album, so it's a blessing to now have something close to Eyen, Krieger, and Bennett's masterpiece complete on two CDs. This is a live recording, so the vocals sometimes lack the polish of the studio version, but the electricity of the occasion, the smart casting, and the thrilling playing of the orchestra more than make up for the occasional vocal glitch. MacDonald's voice isn't really right for Deena (listen to Sheryl Lee Ralph's brilliant near-impersonation of Diana Ross on the Broadway version) but this resourceful singer nearly always makes you forget this. White is terrific, though sometimes lacking Holliday's unique combination of brute force and subtle shadings of tone. Heather Headley is fine as Lorelle, but doesn't banish memories of Loretta Devine's original. Every member of the cast is a superb singing actor, but their strenuous efforts make you realize how wickedly difficult this score is to sing. I think this wonderful show is rarely produced only because it's so hard to find performers who are up to singing it. A CHORUS LINE may have been a phenomenon, but DREAMGIRLS was Bennett's masterpiece -- and not just because Krieger's music is so much better than Hamlisch's. The story, the lyrics, the characters all fuse into a perfect whole, thrilling and funny and finally incredibly moving. This is a show overflowing with honest, deep, powerful emotions -- something conspicuously lacking in both the brittle, self-conscious works of Sondheim and his imitators and the prefab mega-musicals Broadway has seen in recent years. Musical lovers should own both albums -- the Broadway recording for the awesome, legendary performances of Holliday and the rest of the unbeatable cast, and this new one for its completeness and its one-night-only excitement. This new DREAMGIRLS, if less vocally perfect, is even more affecting than the original -- because we get the full emotional impact of the story and the characters, driving a sell-out crowd nearly out of its mind with excitement. Love of the show. Love of the music. Love of the performers. Love of the audience and of musical theatre itself. LOVE is what this wonderful new recording is all about. Buy it and hear for yourself.
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