early on?

"Y'all are gonna do what I tell you," when Deena protests taking Effie's spot as lead, is the first instance I can find. We get teasers following that, until after "The Song", it becomes obvious even to the three-year-olds in the audience.

Oh, and a lot of the songs in "Dreamgirls" have dark or at least unususal themes/subtexts:

-"Fake Your Way to the Top". It's all in the lyrics. Jimmy Early's been in the music biz since 1949, and he's gotten where he is with more soul than actual talent.

-"Family" - meant to be seen as entirely sardonic after you see more of the story unravel, and this is underscored by having the song reprised twice.

-"Dreamgirls" - Curtis and C.C. cross over to the pop charts by having the Dreams present themselves as sexual fantasies to the men in the audience (the girls fondle the mic stands as they sing the opening bars of the song). Says a lot about what white audiences of the 1960s thought of The Supremes, and why a Black male group would never have been the first Motown group to fully cross over.

But some (all?) of this is, of course, obvious.