LEGALLY BLONDE MUSICAL DELIVERS LAUGHS AND FUN
Let’s get the setup and the history lesson out of the way quickly, so that I can dive right into the highlights post-haste — this latest Broadway adaptation at Stage West deserves your attention, and I’ve got plenty of notes to relay!
Legally Blonde: The Musical is exactly what you might expect, a Broadway song-and-dance number based on the hit film starring Reese Witherspoon. Elle Woods (Bracken Burns) is a privileged student riding high on her life and her love for similarly privileged Warner Huntington III (Gaelan Beatty). A curveball sets off a few course corrections to that life and triggers the typical fish-out-of-water story that provides familiar cliches and the even more familiar happy ending after she overcomes all those obstacles.
In Blonde, Elle is a sorority president fish from UCLA, who has to dive into the water at Harvard law school to win back her beau, to get back to her privileged life. If you’ve seen the movie, you know how it ends — she discovers her inner strength, finds a better beau and two sequels find their way into theatres (sorry — one goes direct to video) before the musical version hits Broadway.
All that said, returning director Liz Gilroy (Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) and choreographer Phil Nero (Spamalot) hit the jackpot with a cast that lights up the stage with some extremely demanding song-and-dance routines — even one involving a group rigorously skipping rope without one cast member missing a note, or lopping off any adjacent ears.
Every single cast member brings their A game for both singing and dancing in this outing, but a couple, in particular, stand out. Patrick R. Brown has transitioned directly from his role as Dr. Watson in Baskerville, which just ended its run here, and he commands every inch of the stage as the inevitable villain in these proceedings. He’s a great dramatic actor and a fine singer as required for the egotistical Professor Callahan role.
Also, Daphne Moens truly and literally steals the show with her powerhouse performances as Paulette, the salon owner hard done by circumstances in her less privileged life. But even she gets a happy ending of her own “delivered” to her business by happenstance — a humorous highlight played to the hilt by Reece Rowat.
Musical director Konrad Pluta and his crackerjack band are back to the music room adjacent to the stage, after a bit of time off due to the aforementioned non-musical Sherlock Holmes mystery. Once again, they are a highlight of any evening spent in this space.
I haven’t forgotten about Elle. Burns as Elle Woods is a character showcase of epic proportions for this globe-trotting actress, producer and director. Infusing Elle with enthusiasm and believability, at one point she is able to deflate her character as she steps across the stage, transitioning emotions in the process. During the emotional So Much Better, Burns channels her inner Kristin Chenoweth to close off the first act in forceful fashion.
Daniel Greenberg plays Emmett Forrest, an associate at Harvard whom Elle meets and becomes the friendly face that ultimately ends up even friendlier for her by the closing songand-dance number. Show after
show at Stage West, I find myself writing here that you’d be hardpressed to find a more reliable actor than Greenberg, and once more I cannot find an exception to that run of successes for him.
In what otherwise might be predictable and ho-hum fare, the team of creators which includes Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Heather Hach have created winning songs and scenes.
The highlight, though, has to be There! Right There! (Gay or European). The nugget here is a determination of the witness falling into either category of the song title. And there’s a number about the trademarked technique Elle has developed to determine masculine interest levels — the Bend and Snap. That move helps to win the day for several of these characters.
The bottom line is, there are tons of laughs, outstanding musical numbers and a cast that you’ll root for to the very end. Animal lovers will adore the two (!) live dogs — our audience audibly did. Legally Blonde: The Musical showcases creative talents meshing and doing what they all do best.