Cocktail Party Fact: Instead of a regular Broadway rehearsal period and previews, Dreamgirls broke the rules in a big way. Bennett, hot on the heels of his masterpiece, A Chorus Line, put the show through four separate workshops and an unusually long pre-Broadway tryout in Boston, before bringing it to Broadway. And instead of recording the cast album on one or two Sundays, they spent six weeks recording the score.

Here’s The Plot: Though the authors swear this is not the story of the Supremes, it’s ridiculously close. Three young black girls from Chicago calling themselves the Dreamettes, Effie, Deena, and Lorrell, enter a talent show, where they’re discovered by a too-slick, too-ambitious agent named Curtis, who teams them up with a popular R&B singer named Jimmy Early, to sing back-up for Early. Jimmy falls in love with Lorrell, and Curtis continues to push them on toward stardom. Eventually, he decides that the heavyset Effie doesn’t match the image he wants to sell. So he replaces her with the more attractive Michelle Morris, and makes Deena the lead singer.

Curtis had been romancing Effie, and as he now turns his attentions to Deena, Effie declares that she will not give up that easily, and the first act ends with Effie losing both her spot in the group and her man. The now renamed Dreams become an international sensation, their records topping the charts. Curtis fires Jimmy and Deena decides she wants to act in the movies. But Effie, now with a child, hasn’t given up, and she out-maneuvers Curtis by recording her own version of a Dreams hit and beating them on the charts. Eventually, they are reunited as the Dreams give their last performance together, with Effie as guest star.

Memorable Melodies: “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going,” “Family,” “Steppin’ to the Bad Side,” “Cadillac Car,” “When I First Saw You,” “One Night Only,” “Hard to Say Goodbye.”

Vital Statistics: Music by Henry Krieger, book and lyrics by Tom Eyen, originally directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett. Opened on Broadway December 20, 1981, and ran 1,522 performances. After a national tour, it returned to Broadway in 1987.

Why See It?: When it’s done right (which pretty much means re-creating the original staging and sets), Dreamgirls is an amazing piece of theater, unlike any other show in its use of cinematic techniques and a score in the vocabulary of Motown and R&B, with the structure of opera (lots of sung dialogue and musical scenes).