Duo brings “Dreamgirl” tour to Sonoma Arts Live

Emerson Collins loves the song “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical “Les Miserables,” while Blake McIver adores the title tune from “Dreamgirls.”

So when the two of them decided to put together a duo act, it made sense to title the show “I Dreamed a Dreamgirl.”

The show, coming to the stage at the Sonoma Community Center this weekend, opens with a madcap mashup of them singing those two songs simultaneously, and it doesn’t stop there.

“Through the course of the show, we sing all or part of 49 songs in 90 minutes,” Collins said. They don and doff bits of different costumes along the way.

The idea started with an invitation from the Public Theater San Antonio, Texas, to put together a livestream show in 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic. The first effort went over so well, the duo followed with a couple of sequels.

“We did a Halloween show called ‘Once Upon a Lockdown’ and a Christmas show called ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Lockdown,’” Collins explained.

“This tour is pretty much the greatest hits from all of those lockdown shows,” McIver added. “And we tell our own story, with a few stories from our careers, both separately and together.”

Based in West Hollywood, the two took their tour to Atlanta and Savannah in Georgia earlier this month and so far have booked their show in 10 cities.

McIver and Collins have starred together in four seasons of the Bravo TV series “The People’s Couch,” which ventured into the living rooms of real people to film them watching and commenting on popular shows and news from the previous week.

“We’ve been together for nine years,” Collins said.

They originally met at a McDonald’s in California. This is the first time they have hit the stage together in a live show, although they each have a list of individual credits.

Blake became a junior vocalist champion on “Star Search” in 1992. He appeared as a youth on the TV series “Full House” from 1992 to 1995 and in the 1994 film “The Little Rascals.”

Emerson produced and starred in “A Very Sordid Wedding,” the sequel to cult classic “Sordid Lives,” in 2017 and appeared in “Rent: Live” on Fox TV in 2019.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.