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Karen Mav will share the Effie role from next week. Wallace and Mav have been alternating the part — the lead singer of the Supremes-like The Dreams who’s kicked out of the group when it’s deemed that looks market better than singing talent. There was a lot of chatter about
Dreamgirls going to Broadway, but director Casey Nicholaw has so many shows on the go (The Book Of Mormon is one of his) that it may be years before he’s available to put it on in New York. For now, though, it’s time to say goodbye (as The Dreams sing) to the wonderful Ms Riley and her fellow castmates who are leaving, too. SOPE DIRISU who is searing as Coriolanus in director Angus Jackson’s riveting production that has transferred from Stratford to the Barbican Centre as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Rome season, which will include Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Titus Andronicus. I went on Tuesday night and was transfixed by the goings on in Rome, and events in the play will certainly remind you of stuff we see in the headlines on a daily basis from Whitehall to Washington. James Corrigan as Tullus Aufidius makes a worthy foe. And I loved Haydn Gwynne’s kick-ass mamma Volumnia and Paul Jesson’s Menenius, a once-powerful senator who doesn’t realise his power has dissipated. Jackson has assembled a good ensemble and I particularly enjoyed seeing Martina Laird, Jackie Morrison, Charles Aitken and Ben Hall.