There are significant misses in director Christopher King’s production of Legally Blonde, The Musical, but there are also successes. It takes a while but, ultimately, this show makes its case.
I love this musical.
When we meet her, Elle Woods looks like she might be an airhead. A Malibu princess, her highest aspiration is to persuade her boyfriend Warner to propose and, presumably, determine the rest of her life. But, instead of proposing, Warner breaks up with Elle because he plans to become a senator before he’s 30 and he doesn’t think she’s “serious” enough to be his wife. So Elle follows Warner to Harvard Law School determined to win him back.
Like all the best bimbos, Elle turns out to be smart. And, like all the best bimbo stories, Legally Blonde is about Elle finding the respect, including the self-respect, she deserves — and getting it on her own blonde, pink-wardrobed terms.
In its championing of female solidarity, Legally Blonde is stealthily feminist, and, in its hyperawareness of gender and style — and its celebration of high-femme presentation — it is as camp as my leopard-print stilettos.
The biggest problem with this production, as I see it, is that it lacks style.
Elle’s friends are pampered rich girls from Malibu, but you’d never know it from the ragtag clothing costumer Carson Walliser throws on their backs.
Instead of submitting an entrance essay to Harvard, Elle stages a production number that requires maximum visual focus and impact to make its outrageousness work. But, in Walliser’s design, Elle wears a pink marching-band jacket, the women in the chorus wear blue cheerleading uniforms, and the men are dressed in blue clothing that’s as generic as you can imagine. They look like cleaners. It’s a mess.
I can’t imagine the producing company, Metro Theatre, has a huge costume budget. But style doesn’t have to be expensive; what it requires is creativity. If the big visual statement in that number was that everybody was wearing shiny party-supplies-store marching-band hats, I’d appreciate the commitment.
Speaking of style, under King’s direction, this production repeatedly misses opportunities for camp cultural commentary.
In “What You Want”, the number I keep harping on, the chorus waves a couple of small, bland, blue flags. But, if you pump that up — by making the flags huge and pink, which I’ve seen done — you can create a moment that references Les Miz, but turns it into a pro-Barbie revolution.
When Warren, Elle’s cad of a boyfriend, breaks up with her in the song “Serious”, his fancypants vocal runs can become a send-up of boy-band narcissism. But Stephen Myers, who’s playing Warner here, has been directed to play it straight, so that doesn’t happen either.
Like all camp, Legally Blonde’s camp thrives on the juxtaposition of the serious and the ridiculous. That’s what should happen in “Ireland”, when Elle’s friend Paulette, who is obsessed with the romanticism of all things Irish, and her freshly minted Irish beau Kyle, hurl themselves into stiff-armed, grim-faced Irish dancing. But choreographer Makayla Moore destroys the tension between the characters’ passion and their absurdly controlled expression of it by allowing Paulette and Kyle to wave their arms and wiggle their butts. That’s not how you make it work.
Overall, there’s a serious style deficit in this production.
But its storytelling and many of its performances work a lot better.
Playing Emmett, who becomes Elle’s academic mentor and potential new love interest at Harvard, Daniel Curalli is perfect: full of life, emotionally nuanced, and, a a singer, a pleasure to listen to.
Jessica Lynn Wong also excels as Vivienne, Warren’s apparently cutthroat new girlfriend, which makes her Elle’s romantic competition. Wong’s acting performance is the subtlest of the evening, which really pays off in one of the musical’s most significant plot turns.
Celeste Nicholson’s Elle. I was pushed back a bit by the nasality of her singing voice, but here’s the thing: Nicholson delivers as a storyteller. On an emotional level, I always bought Nicholson’s Elle, which means that her characterization kept me tethered to the story.
Matt Ramer doesn’t bring nearly enough oomph to his performance as Callahan, the demanding law professor. And Julia Halabourda brings a bit too much to her work as Paulette; I would have enjoyed deeper emotional authenticity to go with the eccentricity, but I was always grateful for Halabourda’s vivacity, including during the underpowered first act.
Julia Ulrich brings welcome force and confidence to her performance as accused murderess Brooke Wyndham.
In the end, there’s enough strong storytelling in this production to let the considerable power of the material shine through. In this review, I haven’t even mentioned how witty the songs are, but trust me, they’re effervescent. And the story packs a punch: as I watched it unfold at the Metro Theatre, as Elle came closer and closer to realizing her own worth and others started to recognize it too, I was more and more moved.
That’s what I want from Legally Blonde: a heartfelt defence and celebration of femaleness, femininity, and femme-ness as embodied by my favourite kind of clown, the bimbo.
LEGALLY BLONDE, THE MUSICAL Book by Heather Hach, music and lyrics by Laurence and Nell Benjamin. Based on the novel by Amanda Brown and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture. Directed by Christopher King. Produced by Metro Theatre. At Metro Theatre until June 7. Tickets and information.
PHOTO CREDIT: (Photo of Celeste Nicholson and the company of Legally Blonde by Moonrider Productions)
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