Legally Blonde: The Musical (17/09/10, Savoy Theatre, London)

The day before Avenue Q, we saw Legally Blonde: The Musical, again in London (it's just wrong to have 3 nights in London and not do at least 2 shows!). I didn't have particularly high expectations for Legally Blonde, so I was more than pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be an absolute laugh-riot, with catchy, memorable songs, a funny script, and top class performers. 

The story sees blonde sorority girl Elle follow her boyfriend to Harvard Law school, and follows her journey from a love-struck girl who enrols in law school just to appear smarter for the man of her dreams, to a spectacularly camp, funny and melodramatic court case involving a fitness instructor which allows Elle to use the law skills she has developed, and so she discovers she doesn't need to prove herself to her ex, and finds love with someone who's pretty on the inside. It surprised me how much plotting there actually seemed to be, and many of the jokes were fairly sophisticated. There were a row of dumbing-looking blondes in front of us who didn't seem to get some of the jokes, thereby proving that although Elle isn't as dumb as the stereotype suggests, some people are. 

Sheridan Smith played Elle in a flawless American accent, and she can really sing and dance with the best of them, she truly is a star and she breathes life into Elle, making her a rounded, fun, engaging character. Ex-Corrie and sometime singer Richard Fleeshman played Elle's ex, whom she follows to Harvard, and I have to say his singing was spot on, and he was very good at making Warner Huntington III sometimes sympathetic, and at other times sycophantic. Jill Halfpenny rounded out the 'named' cast (Peter Davison was supposed to be in, but like John Barrowman in La Cage Aux Folles, he was a no-show, the difference being I didn't miss him as I didn't know he was in it) and she was just fantastic as Paulette, Elle's hair salon owning friend.

I'm looking forward to the soundtrack arriving any day now, so that I can relive numbers such as 'Omigod You Guys', 'Bend and Snap' and my favourite, the outrageous 'There! Right There!', which concerns the identity of a key witness and whether he is gay or in fact just European! It's a song them sums up the ethos of the musical, it's camp, it's funny and it's knowing, and Legally Blonde is very much like Hairspray in that it left me grinning from ear to ear and singing the songs all the way home.