Legally Blonde – Seattle, March 9, 2010 by YFA
Went to watch Legally Blonde in the last week of its 3 week run in Seattle. A number of people have seen it by now already and all the feedback I’ve heard is positive, so I went to see it with some expectations. I switched my season ticket and got a better seat – Seat F5 Left! 6th row from the stage, a little off center but that’s OK – only until the show started did I realize I’m right in front of the left rack of speakers and subs so the music was super loud for me :|.
Anyhow, when the musical opened I was a little worried, cuz the singing was rather weak for the opening number – but to my relief that was just the ensemble and none of the girls in the opening song was the lead (Elle Woods). The singing was generally well done, though none of the songs seem particularly challenging (nothing like Defying Gravity). The acting/staging and choreography was the more impressive part – there were quite a number of group dances, some of them looking quite difficult (like doing a workout routine with jumping ropes while singing).
The show was very well written – in terms of witty lyrics and throwing in additional humour (more than the movie), but at the same time cramming a lot of complex plot into musical numbers. It follows the movie’s plot line quite closely (which I find surprising, I was expecting a lot of watering down since I couldn’t imagine how you’d pack the movie into the musical), but the musical did run quite long (I think 2h 45 min with intermission). Also, the composer/librettist/book writer does a good job in moving the plot in song. A gripe I have with many modern musicals (e.g. Catch Me If You Can) is all too often the actors talk to advance the plot, and then break into song just to convey emotion – which to me misses the mark of a good musical. But Legally Blonde doesn’t fall into this “cop out” and includes a fair bit of action in its songs, making the musical more fun.
The excitement does taper off towards the end of Act 1, but picks up strongly throughout Act 2. Overall its a fun and festive musical that reminds me a bit of Hairspray in terms of style. Unfortunately no super memorable song from the musical that I can hum the morning after, so I’ll give it 3.5 stars… or adopting sadd3j’s new rating system, 3.5 rolls:
