The Regent’s Park summer season has got off to a flying start with an “audacious” revival of Legally Blonde, said Clive Davis in The Times. “Go with an open mind and you’ll be blown away” – even if you’re not a fan of the 2001 movie.
For the uninitiated, Legally Blonde tells the tale of ditzy, pink-loving fashion-obsessed Elle Woods (played in the film by Reese Witherspoon), who wangles a place at Harvard Law School in an effort to win back her ambitious, intellectually snobbish ex-boyfriend Warner. She struggles with academia at first, then unveils a razor-sharp legal mind. The film was a hit, but this stage musical, which launched on Broadway in 2007, is “far wittier”, with “insidious melodies” and lyrics with the cheek to rhyme “snobs” with “Thomas Hobbes”.
For this production, director Lucy Moss – co-creator of the hugely successful pop musical Six – has brought the material “bang up to date” for the internet age (references to Instagram and the Kardashians abound) “without sacrificing its joie de vivre”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Legally Blonde is a “smart show about brains as well as beauty, and about the way they interact in society at large”, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. It is also funny and heartwarming. Moss has upped “the fun and the fizz”, and also revamped the show with unusually diverse casting. As Elle, Courtney Bowman – mixed-heritage and sporting blonde braids – is “about as far from the Mean Girls image” as you can get. She gives a “witty, beautifully sung performance of considerable authority”, and is matched by some fine supporting turns.
Bowman is brilliant, agreed Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph; she charts Elle’s “journey of self-discovery with nuance, shifting from initial hurt and bashfulness to indestructible resolve”. The big problem, though, is the dearth of memorable songs. “There’s only so much snappy, campy choreography – aping TikTok-style syncing – and more-wittering-than-witty numbers you can take before déjà-vu and déjà-entendu sets in.”
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, London NW1. Until 2 July
-
The 5 best TV shows about the mobThe Week Recommends From the show that launched TV’s golden age to a Batman spin-off, viewers can’t get enough of these magnificent mobsters
-
Is the US in recession?Today's Big Question ‘Unofficial signals’ are flashing red
-
Dinosaurs were thriving before asteroid, study findsSpeed Read The dinosaurs would not have gone extinct if not for the asteroid
-
6 well-crafted log homesFeature Featuring a floor-to-ceiling rock fireplace in Montana and a Tulikivi stove in New York
-
Film reviews: A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball
-
Rachel Ruysch: Nature Into ArtFeature Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through Dec. 7
-
Music reviews: Olivia Dean, Madi Diaz, and Hannah FrancesFeature “The Art of Loving,” “Fatal Optimist,” and “Nested in Tangles”
-
Gilbert King’s 6 favorite books about the search for justiceFeature The journalist recommends works by Bryan Stevenson, David Grann, and more
-
Ready for the apocalypseFeature As anxiety rises about the state of the world, the ranks of preppers are growing—and changing.
-
A little-visited Indian Ocean archipelagoThe Week Recommends The paradise of the Union of the Comoros features beautiful beaches, colourful coral reefs and lush forests
