There is more pink on the Open Air’s stage than in a flock of flamingoes. The colour of frivolity is the favourite hue of spoilt teen Elle Woods and her coterie of fellow posers.
In a way, the 2001 Reece Witherspoon film was ahead of its time. In 2007, the hit spawned Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin’s musical. But at the time, selfies and Instagram, the inventions that would have profoundly enhanced the ability of Elle and her friends to explore their specialist subjects— themselves — were not yet a thing. Imagine if Lewis Hamilton had been born before the car.
Still, director Lucy Moss has given her energetic and hugely entertaining revival a modern day feel with a smattering of mobile usage. The real up-dating here however is that the role of Elle has been given to Courtney Bowman a casting decision which bazookas the assumption, perpetuated by major productions of the past, that blondes are white.
Bowman is terrific as the trophy girlfriend who is assumed by her Harvard-bound boyfriend Warner (Alistair Toovey) to be too shallow to be his serious life partner. She sets out to prove him wrong by applying to the same law school he was enrolled in.
Courtney Bowman (Elle) in Legally Blonde at Regent-s Park Open Air Theatre. Photo Pamela Raith
Courtney Bowman as Elle
If Penelope Pitstop had joined the Reform Club she would not be more out of place as Elle, in all her glorious pink-ness, at Harvard Law School.
Everything that follows is entirely predictable and utterly enjoyable. The scary law professor (Eugene McCoy) who runs the class learns to respect Elle’s intelligence, as do her fellow students who greet Elle’s lipsticked schtick with disdain.
O’Keefe and Benjamin’s score is one of the funniest in the canon. The opening number Omigod skewers the permanent state of excitement sustained by Elle and her fellow hysterics. But the ingenuity of the score is announced with Warner’s number Serious which is pitched perfectly as a prelude to a proposal of marriage but is in fact just his way of breaking up. And then there is that the hilarious Gay or European?
Eugene McCoy (Callahan) in Legally Blonde at Regent-s Park Open Air Theatre. Photo Pamela Raith
Eugene McCoy as Callahan
It is about a key witness in the trial in which Elle proves her legal prowess. The number survives here despite some criticism it perpetuates stereotypes about gay men. I’m glad. In a European production such as this the number’s target is really American conservative attitudes about what constitutes masculinity.
Meanwhile the excellent Bowman terrifically conveys how frivolity and intelligence can coexist in the same personality. Also outstanding is Michael Ahomka-Lindsay as Harvard student Emmett who is first to see through Elle’s mantle of pink.
Yes, the show is about iinclusivity. And if you need to justify the revival of a joyful musical by framing it as force for good in the battle to increase cultural diversity, I suppose you can and in the show’s programme contributors do. At length.
But really this misunderstands the target of Legally Blonde which is intellectual snobbery, and that cleverness like talent is scattered as randomly as stardust.
