The show comes roaring at you like a souped-up, chrome-plated luxury sedan (perhaps the “Cadillac Car” of the show’s savvy hymn to aspirational marketing). Mr. Nicholaw’s production practices the gospel of razzle-dazzle showbiz that is preached by its leading catalyst (and villain), a double-dealing manager named Curtis Taylor Jr. (the snake-hipped Joe Aaron Reid).

This “Dreamgirls” isn’t subtle, and it doesn’t have the iconoclastic impact of Michael Bennett’s original Broadway staging. But it makes a convincing case for this portrait of a Supremes-like singing group as an enduring, crowd-rousing entertainment with a terrific pastiche score.

The fever of being hungry, talented and thwarted — as it’s experienced by black R&B singers with mainstream dreams in a culturally segregated America — glows from every element of this version. Eager ambition is cannily used as the production’s revved-up motor.

Sometimes the show’s bright and talented (mostly American) ensemble takes that message too much to heart. Adam J. Bernard is well cast as a wild, James Brown-esque singer who’s been asked to tone it down for supper club audiences. But he could, in fact, tone down the character’s clownishness. And the contemporary pop voice of Liisi LaFontaine, as the Diana Ross figure who becomes Effie’s rival onstage and in bed, could be leavened with more period silkiness.

Ms. Riley, though, never seems to be trying too hard in a role that inevitably has her competing with memories of Jennifer Holliday (who received a Tony in the original Broadway production) and Jennifer Hudson (an Oscar winner for the 2006 film) in the same part. It could be argued that Ms. Riley is too healthy and secure-seeming to embody the self-destructive Effie.

But she’s excellent in showing the connection between a talent that knows its own strength and a demanding temperament. And when she sings, Effie’s pain and anger, vulnerability and power, meld into one sparkling, mellifluous river.

Her emotionally supple interpretation of the knockout first-act curtain number, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” is as stirring as any I’ve heard. And you thought the orchestra was loud? It’s purely pianissimo compared with the cacophony that erupts from the audience when Ms. Riley completes that ballad.