Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- “Dreamgirls,” revived at the Apollo Theater in New York’s Harlem, introduces a hot new star named Moya Angela as the indomitable heartsick singer, Effie White.

Effie is the lead singer of the Dreamettes, a trio of naive black girls from Chicago who have come to New York hoping to win first prize at the legendary Apollo’s weekly talent show.

By the end of the first act, the Dreams, as they’ve been renamed, have stardom in their sites, but for a price: They must become blander, sleeker, cuter. None of those words applies to Effie, who is, and who sings, larger than life. Having just been dumped, she dives into “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” as scorching an anthem of pain, longing and disappointment as the musical theater has ever produced.

Following in the near mythic footlights of Jennifer Holliday, who created the role in Michael Bennett’s 1981 original, and Jennifer Hudson, who played Effie in the 2006 film, Angela does not disappoint. Like the Jennifers, she stamps the song with her own personality, making it seem as custom fit for her as any of the seemingly hundreds of dazzling costumes in which William Ivey Long has dressed Effie, the Dreams and their motley circle.

Moving Revival

Watching this revival unfold on the stage of the theater where the fictional “Dreamgirls” begins and ends added an unexpected layer of poignance to the experience.

The night I saw it, most of the people in the audience knew this story, loosely based on Diana Ross and the Supremes. They were vocal in their support of Effie and her male counterpart in the show, the James Brown-like singer James “Thunder” Early (played with sly, irresistible charm by Chester Gregory), who can’t sell out no matter how half-heartedly he tries.

Like “A Chorus Line,” Bennett’s first show as sole director and choreographer, “Dreamgirls” was a manifesto for the new musical, weaving performance, score, story and design into a seamless muscular parable, in this case about art, power and soul.

In some of its key elements, this revival -- first mounted in Korea and heading to Baltimore on a national tour after its five-week run here -- is a rough facsimile. Robin Wagner’s sets are uncharacteristically graceless, Ken Billington’s lighting gratuitously blinding. This won’t overly bother theatergoers who don’t know Wagner’s spectacular work on the original with the late lighting designer Tharon Musser.

Nothing New

Bennett invented a staging vocabulary that advanced the form while still paying tribute to his predecessors. Robert Longbottom, the revival’s director and choreographer, is a hack; every dance sequence is a cliche, every dramatic scene soap- operatic and lacking imagination.

Yet what Angela, Gregory and their colleagues (especially the other Dreamettes, Adrienne Warren and Syesha Mercado) supply for the ear via Tom Eyen and Henry Krieger’s expansive score, Ivey Long supplies for the eye: a dizzying succession of ever more spectacular gowns (can there be any sequins left in the Western hemisphere?). So yes, this “Dreamgirls is a show with killer looks, music to spare and a couple of new stars in its pocket.

Through Dec. 12 at 253 W. 125th St. Information: http://www.ticketmaster.com or +1-212-307-4100. For information about the tour, see http://www.dreamgirlsonstage.com. Rating: ***

What the Stars Mean:
****       Do Not Miss
***        Excellent
**         Good
*          Poor
(No stars) Worthless

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor and critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 22, 2009 22:30 EST