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DREAMGIRLS A DELIGHT
Dreamgirls is the storyline of love, music and fame within competing communities struggling to make a name for themselves to reach the top of the Billboard charts. Their biggest obstacles are themselves in the face of temptations, greed, irresponsibility and social injustices.
It’s hard to believe that a happy ending can close a show where double-crossing is the norm, all in the name of power and greed. But it happens over and over again as the latest cast members deliver their versions through dreams, schemes and back alley deals that dance and sing across the LRS stage at the Hoogland Center for the Arts as they did in 2008.
Most of the faces have changed, but the dream lives on in every Cadillac car (Dave/DeWayne Williams and The Sweethearts/Regina Ivy and Jazmine Hostetter) cruising to roadhouses along the highways of Route 66 from Chicago to L.A. and I-95 from New York and Miami.
It’s about dreams. It’s about music. It’s about family, betrayal and changing. Director Nattalyee Randall and cast member Kevin Ford/Marty know this all too well. We were a part of the 2008 Dreamgirls HCFTA show.
If you’re not dancing in your seat, you’re singing along. If you’re not crying, you’re laughing. and if you do a little bit of one or the other in the same scene; then, this cast has certainly tapped into your soul and taken you to the next level. Enjoy.
Douglas Yul Holt
Springfield
ONLY PLATITUDES
I was amazed by Fletcher Farrar’s thinking that the Chinese Consulate was sincere when he said that China “opposes all forms of unilateralism, protectionism and hegemonic bullying” (Editor’s note, July 31). Is Mr. Wang Baodong unaware of the Muslim Uyghurs being detained in re-education camps and also used as slave labor, the Chinese Navy harassing the Philippines and ramming Philippine boats with their 96-foot Coast Guard ships and building islands for military bases in the China Sea? Plus, China’s cyber-army that has repeatedly hacked U.S. government offices and bases, U.S. infrastructure and U.S. telecom companies and continue their cyber espionage wherever possible.
I seriously doubt Mr. Wang Baodong’s platitudes about “the value of peace.“
Larry Wedding
Springfield
LEGAL BUT NOT GOOD
Not that these are not deserving businesses, or good people that own and run them, but these cannabis grants should be seeking to remedy the very town cannabis is destroying, not the opposite (“City Council approves cannabis grants,” Aug. 14). The youth of Springfield are being engulfed in a cloud of marijuana (literally) as children come piling out of their parents’ cars smelling of it in the car drop off line (at school). We have kids constantly attempting to get high at school all day, from fifth grade on up, and think it’s normal because it’s legal.
Legalization and taxation of things we know are not good for our community will not improve it in the long run. It only pads certain wallets and destroys lives in the process. Let’s look harder to positively change the entire community, not based on addiction.
Aaron Graves
Springfield
GOOD REMINDER
I so appreciated the editor’s note of Aug. 14 reminding us all of the part we each play in this life of “man’s humanity to man.” Amen.
Delinda Chapman
Springfield
This article appears in August 28-September 3, 2025.
