By Cory Bilicko
Entertainment Writer
With the rash of adaptations coming out of Hollywood and Broadway, everything tried and true is new again, and it seems that source material is being unearthed in the least orthodox of places.
Tomb Raider and Resident Evil made leaps from video arcades to big screens as highly successful movie franchises.
This year, HBO released its Grey Gardens docudrama based on Grey Gardens— the 1975 documentary that depicted the cousins of Jackie O who lived in squalor in a decrepit East Hamptons mansion. With Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as her mother, the dramatization even included uncannily realistic re-enactments of scenes from the doc.
But it’s not just the original sources themselves that have been curious— it’s the fact that these adaptations are then being readapted.
For example, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a BBC radio series that became a novel, which was then adapted to film.
Even more bizarre may be 2007’s Hairspray The Musical, the movie that is based on Hairspray The Musical, the Broadway show that is based on Hairspray, the 1988 John Waters movie.
Perhaps more unsettling is that sometimes these adaptations actually work, even better than their progenitors in some cases.
Admittedly, Legally Blonde The Musical may not be atop the to-see lists of many serious theatre-goers. Telling the story of blondie Elle Woods, a recent UCLA grad whose 4.0 GPA in Fashion Merchandising and “personal statement” video get her into Harvard Law School so she can win back the Ivy League boyfriend who recently dumped her for a more serious woman, Legally Blonde is no Waiting for Godot. And yet, by appropriating the antithesis of the classic underdog as an underdog, and demonstrating that heartbreak suffers no fools— even the ones who seem to have it all— we get drawn into Elle’s pink-saturated conflict. We can root for a superficial shopaholic from Malibu as our heroine— as long as she’s nice, and Elle is indeed as sweet as the low-fat Frappucinos gripped by her sorority sisters’ manicures.
As a popcorn movie, Legally Blonde is enjoyable, and Reese Witherspoon’s spot-on, charming performance in it shot her into A-list stardom. However, despite that feeling of having been “entertained,” and despite being coddled by the message that, with lots of hard work (and the right outfits), one can do anything to which one puts one’s mind, there’s still that familiar jejuneness. A bit like skipping a meal to eat a puff of cotton candy.
Legally Blonde The Musical, on the other hand, takes everything that works in the movie and the original novel (there are some pretty good twists, some really cute dogs, and just enough bawdiness to maintain the interest of the prurient-minded) and sends it all up with a wink and some snazzy musical numbers, all the while keeping the story moving along. Though some of the choreography looks a bit unnatural and forced for the characters and scenes being played, the lyrics are amusing while staying true to the narrative. Who knew that the utterance “Oh, my God, you guys!” could have so many different meanings?
In last Friday night’s performance at the Pantages Theatre, Becky Gulsvig was just as charismatic as Witherspoon as she and the rest of the cast turned the Hollywood hit into modern opera. In one of this musical’s efforts to show it doesn’t take itself too seriously, Elle even gets her own Greek chorus— composed of her Delta Nu sisterhood. To create the looming presence of Harvard and a penitentiary scene, the production’s set borrows the sharp angles and exaggerated heights of German Expressionism, which lends an interesting dimension to the California-girl-out-of-water plot.
And, yes— there are actual canines onstage! Elle’s pup Bruiser is played by Chico the Chihuahua (who has an understudy and a stand-in) and Rufus is brought to life by Chloe, a female English bulldog who also has an understudy. Of course, the dogs steal the show, but just long enough to not detract from their human counterparts.
If Legally Blonde the movie is cotton candy, then Legally Blonde The Musical is a strawberry smoothie— nutritious and filling, but still pink.
Legally Blonde The Musical will run through Sept. 6 at the Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd. Tickets range from $25 to $95.
More Information
www.BroadwayLA.org
1-800-982-ARTS
