Legally Blond, The Musical

Arizona Broadway Theatre is currently showing Legally Blond, The Musical. To familiarize ourselves with the plot, we watched the Netflix non-musical version starring Reese Witherspoon. Cute flick, cute Reese as the blond Valley Girl who decides to apply to Harvard Law School attempting to win back the love of her life, yuppie egotist Warner Huntington III. Cute dogs, too. Elle Woods (Witherspoon) carts around a tiny Chihuahua as she descends pinkishly on an unsuspecting Harvard. As I said, cute story, but not one anyone would spend much time admiring for acting or theme. All blonds aren’t dumb blonds, as Elle so delightfully tells us.

The musical version was faithful to the movie almost to the letter, even with live dogs (a Chihuahua and a bulldog). It was a most entertaining evening of song and dance in a very light-hearted story. Once again, we were impressed with nearly every theatrical aspect of ABT's presentation: a set involving eleven different locations, even a bathroom with shower, sink, and commode; choreography that keeps getting better and better with each production, even an extremely complex and difficult number in a women’s prison, where Brooke Wyndham (Lynzee Jaye Paul 4man), a wealthy health guru who’s been accused of killing her elderly, wealthy husband, leads a group of six fellow prisoners in a number involving synchronized jump roping and swinging of the jump ropes (all kinds of room for error and injury); the voices, although maybe a little too strident, were all good, especially that of Paulette the manicurist (Abigail Raye) and Emmett Forrest (Jesse Michels), Elle’s real love interest once she sees how shallow Warner is (Glen North); the orchestra, only seven pieces, continues to surprise me with the quality of its musical accompaniment. The score, clever and funny, included numbers neither I nor anyone else in the audience knew, numbers that wouldn’t have ever made it onto a top-ten chart, the best of which were “Omigod You Guys” (sung in the opening Delta Nu sorority house), “Blood in the Water” (sung in Professor Callahan’s classroom expressing the professor’s attitude toward successful defense attorneys), “Whipped into Shape” (sung in the prison during the jump rope number), and “Bend and Snap” (sung in the hair salon when Elle teaches Paulette how to win a man). Melissa Mitchell was filling in for Leanne Smith, who is the regular Elle Woods. Ms. Mitchell had a bunch of singing to do and sung them adequately but not great. And it was slightly unfortunate that she was enough overweight to make Elle look odd in some of her skimpy outfits, especially the pink bunny costume she wore to the frat house party. But it was a fun way to spend an evening with another excellent ABT meal to lead off that fun evening with Elle Woods and the cast of Legally Blond, The Musical.