By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
If I’d worn one of my pink shirts to the dress rehearsal I’d have fit right in with the Waterville Playshop’s production of “Legally Blonde the Musical, Jr.”
This celebration of blonde-power is a virtual explosion of pink. Based on the 2001 movie of the same name (except of course for “the musical” and “Jr.” parts), the plot takes our heroine Elle (Ella Pfefferle) from being obsessed with fashion and getting engaged to an aspiring U.S. Senator Warner Huntington III (Cooper Unverferth) to being obsessed with fashion and succeeding at Harvard Law.
The Playshop’s production of “Legally Blonde the Musical, Jr.” opens tonight at 8 p.m. in the Maumee Indoor Theatre with further shows Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Click for tickets.
For the junior version, large chunks of talk and some songs have been excised leaving the bones of the story to support a steady stream of exuberant song and dance. The story is there, not so much the character development, leaving so much of the fun. The show, directed by Connie Matlow with assistance from student Brooke Dove, and with choreography by Nicole Spadadore, moves briskly in one hourlong act. The show is performed to pre-recorded tracks.
This involves a cast of 52, all 18 or younger. Elle’s sorority chorus has grown. They open the action with a rousing number “Omigod You Guys” that sets the tone. Then they follow, in spirit, Elle across the continent when she moves from Santa Monica, California, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. They bring that flash of pink of the otherwise drab halls of Harvard.
At first, Elle is presented as a ditsy blonde, yet she shows her savvy when dealing with the salespeople in the dress store. She knows the finer details of dress making.
Warner’s attitude toward her is evident as he talks only about her looks, and then breaks up with her saying he, and his parents, think he needs someone more serious. He finds her at Harvard in the person of the snooty Vivienne (Kylie Roberts). Elle is determined to win Warner back, but first she must show she belongs at Harvard Law.
That means impressing the demanding and overbearing Professor Callahan (Truth McCadney). After getting booted from class the first day she finds help from his more sympathetic graduate assistant Emmett Forest (Colin Meyer). In “Chip on My Shoulder,” Emmett urges her to adopt the attitude that enabled him, as a working class kid, to succeed at Harvard Law.
He helps by tutoring her on the academics while she finds emotional support from the hairdresser Paulette (Maezy Kirk), who has man-issues of her own. She laments her old boyfriend dumped her and took her dog. (Both dogs, Belle’s Bruiser and Paulette’s pup Rufus, are played endearingly by Avery Malloy and Olivia Murphy, respectively.)
Paulette longs for an Irish guy who can dance without moving his arms. The choreography is a send up of Riverdance, which was all the rage back when the musical was written.
An entirely different style of dance comes into play on new wave anthem “Whipped Into Shape” when we meet Brooke (Maddie Hubley) a fitness guru accused of murdering her rich, much older husband.
Like any good legal story this one sings and dances its way to the big trial, and then Harvard graduation as a denouement when Elle assures us she’s found her way.
