Is Dreamgirls Being Graded on a Curve?

I did the Critic-O-Meter of Dreamgirls today, and it's a very curious crop of reviews.  Many of the reviews are largely negative on a sentence-to-sentence level, but end up recommending the show. At not even grudgingly recommending the show. Enthusiastically recommending it. Elisabeth Vincentelli's review opens with the sentence "And I'm telling you: You are going". And then immediately launches into calling the show cheaply made, poorly orchestrated, and lamely designed on a set level. Later in the review, she knocks the choreography, one of the lead actresses and the projections before giving it three out of four stars.  Hers is one of several reviews that do this. There are three things I can think of that are going on here.

First is simply that people genuinely love the original material. It's hard not to be seduced by Kreiger and Eyen's watered-down-Motown-schtick. I was quite taken with the film the first time I saw it (and flat-out despised it by the end of viewing #3) and Kreiger's music especially does a good job of distilling what is easily loveable about 60s soul in much the same way that the soundtrack to The Big Chill does. And he provides lots of opportunity for great singers to really cut loose (too many, if you read Brantley's take), which is pleasurable regardless of the quality of the material. (My own problems with the show I covered ina  preview post, but they're largely book-related... the shows relationship to the real Motown story makes it impossible to appreciate on its own terms, but it gets that story wrong again and again and again largely because the story of the Supremes isn't hugely interesting, particularly when compared with the story of the Temptations, who should probably get a jukebox musical of their own some day).

Second is the resonances of doing the show at the real location of its opening and closing numbers: the Apollo.  As any good reader of Peter Brooks The Open Door (or fan of site-specific theater) can tell you, location matters! All is context!  The right context can lift a mediocre show to the rafters and provide it with resonances the production doesn't really earn on its own.

Finally, tho, and the real reason I suspect this is going on is that it's a "touring" show. Many of the reviews say actually say this... "oh, this is good for a touring show". In other words, a touring show doesn't have to be as good as a Broadway show, which I guess I understand (although I think really a show is either successful or it isn't to some extent).  But I don't think that makes sense with this particular show.  Dreamgirls has a Broadway director, a Broadway design team, costs Broadway prices to see, is being managed by a Broadway general manager and is produced by John Breglio, who produced A Chorus Line on... wait for it... Broadway! That all of this Broadway talent couldn't make a lower budget work should be a serious knock against their creative skills.  That Robert Longbottom is "a hack" (to quote one review) who doesn't have enough imagination to make this musical work on a constrained budget with constrained touring logistics is a problem. etc. and so forth.

Comments

[Aaron Grunfeld]

I'm curious how you adjust on Critic-o-Meter for this sort of critical reaction. When a show shouldn't work but does, it confounds my faculties, even on the level of mere description.

In the case of Dreamgirls, part of it is the great music & its singer-friendly quality. It's like Shakespeare: even a mediocre production is great, cuz of the script.

In terms of the site, the reaction is also due to the audience's receptivity to this show about African-American show biz. Reviews often fail to note how the audience plays a part in how enjoyable the evening is.

[Elisabeth Vincentelli]

I wanted to get my caveats out of the way first to get on with what I liked about the production. Yes to me it works because Dreamgirls itself is a great show -- I'll stand by that. I didn't like the movie because it felt bloated, too explainy. At the Apollo, things move along fast, as they should. The over-the-topness also works a lot better on stage than on film.

I also think the music's not watered down, especially if you compare it to mainstream Motown, which purists felt was watered-down R&B to begin with -- it always coveted the pop charts. In Dreamgirls you have dead-on period arrangements grafted on show tunes. It's a good hybrid.

It's also hard to underestimate how exciting it is to see the show at the Apollo. It's true what they say about location, location, location.

[Steve On Broadway (SOB)]

Isaac, If you've never seen Dreamgirls on stage, I posit that you haven't seen the musical the way it should be viewed. The film watered down the story and shifted the focus away from Effie. This is ostensibly her story, not Beyonce's, er, Deana Jones'.

I do believe you raise valid points on the critics' centering many of their thoughts on "this is a touring production so it will suffice." That is flawed thinking pure and simple and says to flyover country that they're somehow not worthy of something better.

[isaac]

Steve,

My problem with the show is that it on some level doesn't work on it's own. it works as a "riff" on the Motown Story. This is more exaggerated by the costume and production design of the movie, but it's still a problem in the material.But the problem is the ways it departs from the Motown story are totally slanderous to Barry Gordy, who did more for black artists than anyone involved in Dreamgirls will ever do. It also focuses one of Motown's least musically interesting major acts, and makes up a bunch of shit about how Diana Ross came to be lead singer of the Supremes.

The musical also commits the very same act that propels its action: It's white artists watering down black music for money.