This is the MTV filmed live from The Palace Theatre on Broadway's 2007 release, now available to watch on Youtube. How often do you get the chance to watch a Broadway Musical in your own living room? Well, find your best pink outfit and go for it!
This is a very fast-paced and slick production which hardly stops for breath. The choreography is upbeat and funky, and the jokes and sass are all-American! The good thing about this Musical - which is aimed primarily at the female teenager (although it's a huge hit within the gay community too), is that it has a very real moral, a superb message to send out to the target audience.
I have seen several (perhaps one would say too many) versions of this show over the last few years, but all have been in England, with a British cast, and so have all been somewhat 'toned down' from this Broadway version. Perhaps we really are more reserved, more anal, and less likely to want everything coated in oodles of sugar than our American friends, and so to say this show was saccharine would simply be a huge understatement. It's incredibly sweet, sugary and very pink! But it is extremely slick, funny and high energy, and the audience absolutely lapped it up!
The show follows the fortunes of rich kid and Malibu socialite, Elle Woods as she is dumped by her boyfriend since he wants 'to get serious' and goes to study at Harvard Law School, and she decides that she must follow him there to win him back. However, despite being a very unconventional law student, she finds that she actually has a talent for and wins her first major case with a little help from her new boyfriend, Emmett.
The two stand-out numbers in the show for me, and here was no exception, are "Whipped Into Shape" and "Gay Or European".
Laura Bell Bundy headed the cast as Elle, Christian Borle shone as Emmett, Richard H Blake played Elle's first boyfriend Warner, and Kate Shindle was Warner's Law school fiancee, Vivienne. Orfeti portrayed the Irish hairdresser-with-heart Paulette, and was vocally strong, sadly though for me the characterisation, and total lack of anything even remotely Irish in either her speech or her movements made her wrong for the role. Michael Rupert shone as the law professor who makes a pass at Elle, and Nikki Snelson is superb as the skipping-rope jailbird, Brooke.
This Broadway show was directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell with Beth McCarthy Miller as the Creative Consultant, and was produced by Frank Garritano.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 31/5/20
No comments:
Post a Comment