Broadway's Marion J. Caffey is back. So is Tony Award-winning Gretha Boston and her powerful pipes.
Spanning 400 years of music and eight musical styles - opera, Broadway, jazz, blues, soul, spirituals, R B and gospel - the show is a celebration of the versatility of female voice. "Versatility is the hook this show hangs itself on. And you won't get any more versatile voices on stage," said Caffey.
Conceived and directed by Caffey, 3 Mo' Divas makes its Canadian premiere at the Maclab Theatre. Previews for the show began yesterday, with opening night this Thursday. Before arriving here, the show toured the United States.
"We've had 100% standing ovations for the last 12 weeks, and sold-out houses. People standing and yelling and applauding," said the Broadway writer/director. Caffey and Boston were behind last year's Citadel hit Cookin' at the Cookery, the story of jazz vocalist Alberta Hunter.
While that show was a hybrid between a musical, a cabaret and a play, 3 Mo' Divas is more of a theatrically staged concert. "It gets the same response audience-wise, but it's a very different experience, based on the concept of classically trained singers crossing multiple styles of music," explained Caffey. 3 Mo' Divas is mo' in line with another creation by the former New York song-and-dance man, Three Mo' Tenors.
That show opened to critical acclaim in New York in 2000, taped for PBS, recorded a CD for RCA and is now touring the world. "Yes. I am Mo' Music Inc.
," he laughed. "Coming up we're actually doing a TV special with the Tenors and Divas combined." 3 Mo' Divas is three mo' divas on top of that.
The demanding show puts such an incredible strain on voices, it requires six singers. "You only see three during a performance. The issue is that, as in opera and on Broadway, when the show is extraordinarily vocally demanding, they double-cast the show.
"There's nobody alive that can actually tell anybody how to sing eight styles of music on the same vocal chords. After dealing with the Tenors, I realized you can only push the voice so far. Because they come from a classical background, and operas don't sing eight shows a week, we ask each cast to only sing four shows in a week.
" But don't think there's a "A" and a "B" cast. "You can't find the weak link. The shows are very different because I tailored them to the solo work of the artists.
We invite people for a grand discount to come back and see the second cast." So that no diva is ever - shudder - second-billed, the trios are labelled "Cast A" and "Cast 1." There are even two opening nights (Oct.
26 and 27). "I've become a politician," he chuckled. Cast A is Boston, Jamet Pittman and DeVonna Lawrence.
Cast 1 features Andrea Jones-Sojola, Laurice Lanier and Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer. And if some of those names may not be familiar to you, they will be after the show, promised Caffey. "That's the wonderful surprise in the box of Crackerjack: the discovery of these divas in the world.
I think people like discovering new talent; like, no one knew Gretha before she got here last time," he added. "First of all it is a family show. But I think if you are a lover of music it is one of the most enjoyable evenings in the theatre you will ever experience - and I'm saying this based on our audiences.
I mean, at the end of the show when the lights go out, audiences are jumping to their feet in the dark, waiting on the lights to come up to applaud the bows. It's been a wonderful thing for me to experience, bringing that kind of joy." The show is backed by a seven-piece orchestra, headed by musical director and pianist Joseph Joubert.
3 Mo' Divas runs through Nov. 12 at the Maclab Theatre. For tickets and times: 425-1820 or www.
citadeltheatre.com.
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