Snaps for Legally Blonde the Musical!
Omigod! Omigod you guys! I saw Legally Blonde the Musical! What a big surprise!
…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let us go back in time to the morning of December 25th where my husband handed me a box that felt…empty. Seriously, nothing could have been in this thing it was so light. If you shook it, absolutely no sound was heard. Had my husband just wrapped up an empty box and called it a present? No, of course not. Because inside was two tickets to Legally Blonde the Musical! (insert high pitched excited teenage girl screams here)
10 days later away Joe and I went to the Kennedy Center. The kids were with their Aunt Robin (btw thanks Robin!) and Joe and I had more hours to ourselves then we have had in quite a long time. And we were going to do something girly! Planned by him! A guy! How many of you wives now are totally jealous? Yeah, I thought so.
We took the metro and the machine spit out Barack Obama head cards. That was interesting, sliding his face through a machine, I mean. Isn’t that technically defacing a president? Well, future president. It seems wrong, somehow. But I’m getting off topic, and you don’t care about about Barack Obama metro cards. You want to hear about Legally Blonde the Musical!
Well, your still going to have to wait. See, when Joe and I got to the Kennedy center the show was still a good two hours away. We wanted to eat dinner first. So we go up to the roof terrace level and choose to dine at the KC Cafe. Not having gone to work since I was 19, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at a place were you choose your food and pay for it in a lunch style buffet. I think Joe felt he was being cheap, but for me it was interesting, new, and different. I love interesting, new, and different. And besides I was in the mood for a soup and salad anyway. Unfortunately, they only had chicken noodle and french onion, neither of which appealed to me. Restaurants in Maryland really need to learn to always have some sort of seafood soup on hand, preferably crab soup. I mean we are in MARYLAND, home of the blue crab. It isn’t rocket science people. It’s what tourists and natives both want. Anyway to get off my soap box, I stuck with the salad. One question though, whats up with charging 93 cents for a damn roll? Geeze, I’m suprised they didn’t add on a “butter” surcharge. Ok, maybe I wasn’t off the soap box just yet… Still, the salad was good and fresh and had some yummy dressing.
There was also a 3:1 ratio of girls to guys in the restaurant, as my husband pointed out that it would be a great place to pick up women. I asked if he was sad that he was married knowing the truth about where to pick up women as he does now, and he told me no that the bar would be set too high if he picked up women here & they would be expecting art museums all the time and stuff. So now I’m really confused, because he took me to an art museum on our first date, and I’m having flashbacks because he used that same exact wording on our first date “Now, I have to be honest with you, I’m afraid I set the bar to high. I’m worried you will be expecting art museums all the time, and it won’t be like that.” And here I was on a date to see Legally Blonde the Musical (have I not stressed that enough?) I guess what I’m trying to say is, he is right. He set the bar too high. Poor him. 
You know whats next, right? Yes, we FINALLY went to the opera house to see…the show.
And let me just say, it was TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME! It was just so much fun, really. We had good seats, front row of the first tier, so we got a good view of the entire stage. I loved Elle & Emmett. As the main characters of the play, they had to be good, and I wasn’t disappointed one bit.
I’ve never read the book (still waiting for the kindle version), but I found the changes from the movie interesting. Some of the most notable changes was in the movie version Elle discovers the pool boy is gay due to a comment he makes about her shoes. In the musical, she discovers he is gay when she does the bend & snap in front of him and he doesn’t react. Then hilarity ensues when the cast performs a song to determine if he “is he gay or european.” My guess is that they made the change mostly to 1, give the bend & snap a little bit more of the spotlight since that was pretty popular in the movie and two, because Prada might not have allowed the use of their name/product placement in the show like other companies did. And yes, there was product placement galore, especially when it came to magazines.
Emmett took on a bigger roll in the show than he did in the movie, as “they” put more into the love story between Elle and himself. For example, in the movie Elle drives herself to work hard after wearing the playboy bunny costume. In the musical Emmett drives Elle after seeing her in the playboy bunny costume. We also learn a little more about Emmett and his background in this scene. Which, because I love Emmett so much (and he was pretty cute too…shh, don’t tell Joe) was awesome. Elle wasn’t a pushover at all though, as there was a sub-story line about Emmett’s wardrobe. This resulted in an added scene where Elle takes Emmett shopping. All in all, I loved how they took each of their strong suits and helped each other in their relationship. Made the whole “building of a relationship” a lot more believable in the show than in the movie, where it just magically happened after finishing law school.
I also have to mention the parody of the Greek chorus. Because it is true, every tragedy needs a greek chorus, the Delta Nu’s fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately, Legally Blonde isn’t really a tragedy…unless you don’t stay for the ending or your Warner Huntington III.
In general, the show itself began cute and teenager-ey. Had a lot of great moments in the middle, and a lot of just plain silly scenes in the end. It was just fun. Fun. Fun.
As far as technical aspects of the costumes were awesome and fun. The engagement dress scene was the most notable change as it was done right there on stage in only a few seconds. I heard that it was done by the use of magnets, but I don’t know if that is true. The timing of the choreography could have probably been better. I caught several moments where one or two of the cast was off in almost every number. However, the jump rope “whip it into shape” dance was just totally awesome. You could just tell that the difficulty level for that was high, the way they were jumping and swinging the ropes.
Unfortunately that was where big blunder number 2 of the night happened. One of the girls had lost their jump rope in mid swing and it flew almost back stage. They tried to recover by playing it off as an act where one inmate who lost their rope stole another inmates jump rope and that inmate had to pick up the one that was dropped. I get the never lose your character thing, but I think that just made it too obvious considering she stole from an inmate that was closer to the front. Should have chose an inmate from the back.
The first big blunder? At the beginning of the show in mid-musical number one of the Delta Nu’s, Margot, I think? had to pick up the dog in mid doggy-jump. Unfortunately she missed. And then she missed again. Finally she stopped calling the dog up with her hand and just bent down and picked the dog up. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but she looked out into the audience and gave quite a sheepish look about it. I forgive her because she wasn’t originally supposed to be playing Margot that night. And timing a dogs jump has got to be hard.
It was about 10pm when Joe and I left the Kennedy Center. 2 and 1/2 hours for a musical isn’t bad, but I think Joe felt bad for Robin when he realized how long musicals really are since we would still take awhile to get home and she had an hour drive back to her house (Thanks again Robin!). Of course, I probably should have told him, but he didn’t ask me until we were eating dinner that night…and I didn’t want to tell him at that point for fear he would change his mind about sitting though a girl-ey show! Besides, it is right on the Kennedy Center website and he is the one who bought the tickets for me.
One more thing, on the metro, while holding my Barack Obama head card, on the way home, I saw an adult woman who WAS SHORTER THAN ME. It was awesome! You have to understand, I’m only 5 feet tall. Get out your measuring tape, because that’s pretty short even for the women in my family. And this woman was noticeably shorter than me…by at least 4 inches. Things like that don’t just happen to me every day. In fact, they never happen to me. It was cool. Especially after standing in an elevator earlier that night with two other women going “How tall are you?” “Oh, I’m 5.4″ “Really? I’m 5.6″ So you can just imagine my joy of not being the shortest person in the room…for once.
More posts like this:
- Gonna kick some pinewood derby butt. – January 9, 2009
- Thursday Thirteen #7 – August 10, 2006
- Guide to celebrating New Years Eve with children. – January 2, 2009
- Thursday Thirteen #6 – July 27, 2006
- Christmas List. – December 3, 2004
C
January 5th, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
I am so jealous of you. I would love to see that. You are so lucky. I just found your blog but I will be keeping an eye on you for sure!!~C
Tom Carter
January 5th, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
Nice article! I lived in Washington a long time, went to Kennedy Center often, and had dinner on the roof, too. Brings back nice memories!
By the way, thanks for your comment on Opinion Forum for Amber’s article, “The ‘Twilight’ Series.” She’s only 12, and she loves to write. What you see on the site is her writing, with very minimal editing. She’s very encouraged by comments and feedback, so, again, thanks.
By the way, I like your site, and I’ve added it to our blogroll.
Penlighted
January 5th, 2009 @ 8:32 pm
I kept smiling while I was reading the whole post. I can hear your excitement. I’d love to that show too because surely it sounds fun.
Blessings to you!
mamaholler
January 6th, 2009 @ 9:42 am
I saw it with my daughter! LOVED IT!
mamaholler’s last blog post: hahahah…
KathyB!
January 6th, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
Your husband sounds wonderful! Next time bring a really big suitcase. I’m squeezin’ in there and going with you
KathyB!’s last blog post: Now I know why I’m always so happy