Dreamgirls - Savoy / UK Tour

Not announced yet but most of us are praying for that to happen 🙏🏻👑

Amber gets her entrance applause, even on the Recording!

OK... so I spent until about 3am listening to the Cast Recording. A few notes, if I may.

It's a great Cast Recording overall. The sound is fantastic, the cast throughout are stellar. You can tell at some points when they are different performances, simply because the quality of the cast changes somewhat throughout. Like, clearly the title song was recorded on a seperate night, as Liisi sounds pretty crap on that one compared to what she does on the rest of her numbers. And I get the sense And I Am Telling You was recorded on a seperate night, but I don't really know why I have that sense.

This Cast Recording does feature the audience, and believe me they do featured alot! Obviously at the end of songs, but also throughout some songs (notably the Opener when Amber recieves entrande applause, And I Am Telling You, the I Am Changing "moment" and The Rap). Thankfully, when it is during songs, it is alot more toned down, probably in the studio, with the exception of a couple of songs where clearly whoever produced this wanted the audience to be heard!

Amber is obviously the highlight, and steals the show from everyone else as she does in the theatre! This score is pretty inhumane to expect aomeone to sing 7 times a week, let alone 1 performance, but she is not holding back! I'm not surprised at all she has been getting ill in all honesty. Liisi sounds alot better than the title song lead us on to believe. Ibinabo sounds fantastic, and it makes me all the more sad she is gone. And Lily sounds alot better recorded than she does live, but obviously she isn't given much to do here. The men all sound great, god damn Tyrone Huntley's voice is so beautiful! The ensemble aslo sound great.

I was surprised the amount of diologue on this Recording! It pretty much has the entire diologue (script and score), which genuinely surprised me but also makes me very happy as you get a real sense of the live experience. And they sound fantastic in their acting choices throughout based on audio alone.

Suffice to say, if the Live Kinky Boots Cast Recording got a Grammy nomination this year, this will make the three Dreamgirls Grammy nominees come Winter (in terms of performers, only the leads are considered the recipients of the Grammy, as well as those who produce and make sigificant contributions to it!). But it would totally deserve it. Overall, a fantastic Cast Recording, it makes me really happy to say that because I was hesitant yesterday with the release of the title song. 4* from me, possibly 5* when I give it another listen.

The recording is OK but it has all the same issues I had with the show - Liisi's voice is not one I enjoy listening to apart from in Listen which was also her only amazing vocal when I saw the show live both times and Joe Aaron Reid's voice is generally weak. Amber is obviously the star of the show and she sounds amazing on this as does Tyrone. Never got to see Ibinabo as Lorrell as she was off the first time I went and she sounds decent. I saw Candace (who was good) and Asmeret Ghebremichael (who was superb) and I think Asmeret sounds best of those. Adam J Bernard is excellent on the recording but is better in person.
I think as a stand alone cast recording it is not solid (and consistent) enough compared to the other Dreamgirls recordings out there. It is a shame there are weak links in an otherwise amazing cast.

So, I got to see this last night. My only interaction with Dreamgirls to date had been seeing Amber Riley's AIATY on the Oliviers broadcast. As such I had little preconception or expectations for the show.

I was blown away. The cast really put everything into it and the show appeared very tight. There were a few songs that I felt were basically padding to make up the time and didnt give anything to the story but by and large the book was great, appropriately funny accompanied by some great music.
I thought the combined contribution of Lighting and Set Design was genius and really made the show. So simple but wonderfully complicated technically. Massive respect to the lighting designer for fighting the likely urge to go wild with mirror balls for any number of songs. I think it would have been a really easy, obvious route to take, but by excluding them maintained class.
The audience were really lapping up the show, although at times I did feel like I was in the audience for Britains got Talent with the whooping and cheering, but actually think it made the show even more exciting.
Having seen Tyler Huntley in JCS last year at Open Air I thought his voice has developed somewhat over the last year with more power. Really great performance.
Amber, as expected, gave it her all and seemed to enjoy the performance, but during the curtain call looking like she was just going through the motions, not even smiling at times. I wonder if she was concerned about the amount of vocal fans in the audience who were blatantly about to all descend on the stage door.
Also got to mention the theatre. Comfortable and a great view from Mid Stalls. The rows are really well staggered to give a great view throughout.
Overall a really enjoyable show and I think I'll be back soon.

Oooo true, I didn't realise that! Shes forgotten one of them, and I'm assuming its not the three she is on stage with every night.

If you're reading this Marisha I adore you 😂

Been trying to get in to the recording, but just can't. Why not put them in a studio? Why is that an outdated thing to do now? Live recordings always sound so thin.

By comparison, Hello Dolly! sounds glorious. You can really hear each orchestration, which I adore. Dreamgirls, I feel like I'm missing a lot.

Maybe that's just me!

I'll be finally seeing this in 10 days! So freaking excited!

Shaaaadeeee...
What is it with this show? 😂😂