DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended

How many times can you keep going to see productions of Dreamgirls? If you can catch an incredible cast, spiffy direction, and voices that knock your socks off, I am telling you, keep going. The multiple storylines work on all levels and this production ratchets up the stakes to a fevered pitch. Issues of class, race, and “crossover” music, interweave with aspects of love, lust, and hints of Svengali-like transformation of a newly minted girl singing group in the early 1960’s. Effie’s got the voice, but Deena has the look and in the right hands of an unscrupulous, winner takes all manager, the group is repackaged to sell. So up the charts they climb, leaving bruised egos, old school sounds, and brutalized hearts along the way. It’s a classic story of survival, almost Machiavellian where the ends benefited society with integrated performances and more radio airplay, via not so noble means.
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Washington Post - Highly Recommended

"...Around his twin dynamos, director Matthew Gardiner has gathered a cadre of singer-actors fully equipped for the vocal rigors of a fairly conventional show-biz story made special by Henry Krieger's emotionally raw pop score and the propulsive advance of the musical staging. That energy, a hallmark of Michael Bennett's brilliant original Broadway production, is regenerated slickly by Gardiner and co-choreographer Brianne Camp."
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Washington Examiner - Highly Recommended

"...Let's just cut to the chase. You buy tickets to a show like Signature Theatre's "Dreamgirls" to see the raging ball of hubris that is one Miss Effie White. After three decades of sundry stage and film actresses portraying the diva, you want to know if someone can still surprise us, impress us, make us hear something we haven't heard before."
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WeLoveDC - Highly Recommended

"... Dreamgirls is perhaps one of the best musicals of the year and delivers wholeheartedly. It is not only a dream realized for Effie White but for Nova Payton as she becomes a household name on the DC arts scene."
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Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended

"...From its electric lead performances to the non-stop energy of its music and dancing-even its set-Signature Theatre's production of Dreamgirls exceeds all expectations. This show is a knockout that, in the compact MAX Theatre, feels like a Broadway production staged in a living room."
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DC Metro Theater Arts - Highly Recommended

"..."You're gonna love me," wails Nova Y. Payton as cast-off lead singer Effie White in the showstopper Act I finale of Signature's Dreamgirls. Payton makes good on her promise: I do love her. In fact, I love the entire cast of this phenomenal production."
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MD Theatre Guide - Somewhat Recommended

"... So here I am with a big predicament. I have just seen a show at a theatre that I highly respect. The production at least for me is way under what the house is capable of achieving. Add to that a leading lady that everyone is gaga over–and I don’t understand why. Put this all together and you have in a nutshell how I feel about Signature Theatre’s production of Dreamgirls. My predicament is how do I explain all of this without making me sound really nasty."
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