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PRETTY IN PINK: Laura Bell Bundy plays Elle Woods, a role created by Reese Witherspoon in the 2001 film, in the new Broadway-bound musical "Legally Blonde," which has its world premiere at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre.
'Blonde' easy to root for
Tale of woman who conquers Harvard is now a musical
By Karen D'Souza, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Inside Bay Area
Article Last Updated:01/26/2007 12:27:12 PM PST
Get ready to bend and snap, people!
"Legally Blonde" the musical is setting up shop at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre and it's, like, totally a world premiere. "Valley Girl" meets "The Paper Chase" in this girl-power-athon slated to move to Broadway in April. Starting this week, Bay Area audiences get to dish on the relative awesomeness of the high-gloss musical comedy first.
In case you've been living in a pop culture-free environment, this pinker-than-thou tuner is based on the hit Reese Witherspoon flick from 2001 (based in turn on Amanda Brown's novel) about a Bel Air diva who flounces off to Harvard to win back her ex. Once there, she discovers that she has way more going for her than a titanium Visa and a great blowout. How deep is that?
As in Brown's original chick-lit hit (inspired by her real-life Stanford stint, doncha know), Elle Woods is a Gemini vegetarian. Ditto her pet Chihuahua Bruiser. Matching outfits may be involved. But we digress.
Check this. When we first meet Elle, she and her sorority sistahs are so sure that her boyfriend Warner Huntington III is going to pop the question that they practically have the rock picked out. Only he drops a bomb instead. He wants a girl who knows more about jurisprudence than Juicy Couture. He wants someone less ... blond. Ouch.
"She's like 'What are you talking about? I can do anything. Hey, I've got a 4.0, I can get into Harvard' and she's got total determination about it. She's like 'I'm gonna do it' and she does it," says actress Laura Bell Bundy, who plays Elle. "She gets in, and she's like WHOA!"
The whole you-go-girl plot may seem a tad retro (see the bootylicious bend and snap move vs. oh, say, Mary Tyler Moore tossing her cap in the air), but Bundy actually sees Elle as a role model in her own right. She may start out clueless, but she ends up kicking butt.
"She proves it to Huntington," says the beyond bubbly Bundy, 25, "but she also proves it to herself, and through that journey she realizes that loving herself is more important than loving him, and she doesn't need anyone else to be happy and fulfilled and have a future."
Director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell thinks the show's be-yourself theme couldn't be more relevant in the age of Britney crotch shots and Bratz dolls. This here is feminism as feel-good fairy tale. Elle may be tres trendy, but she's no airhead. This girl knows her Gloria Steinem from her "Girls Gone Wild."
"I don't know about you, but when I look around at the world today, it seems to me this is still a message that girls need to hear," Mitchell says. "I always like to have someone to root for. I like to walk out of a musical with a little bit of hope."
Pooch in tow, powderpuff on overdrive, Elle learns that self-respect feels as good as a new pair of Prada pumps (well, almost). Bundy notes that her favorite song is the Act 1 closer "So Much Better," when Elle nabs a coveted legal internship right out from under her ex.
"It's really awesome," says Bundy before breaking into notes of high-pitched ecstasy. "It's like making love with you all night/No wait this is so much better/Hello, much better/It's oh-oh-oh-oh much better."
Here, here. Certainly with Laurence O'Keefe, of the vampire musical "Bat Boy" fame, as a co-writer, "Legally Blonde" has some serious alt-theater chops. O'Keefe admits that his fringe theaters pals have accused him of selling out for taking on "Blonde." He thinks not.
"There's fluffiness, but there's also a strong moral core to the story," O'Keefe says. "The theme of the show is really that you need to define yourself, or other people are going to do it for you."
Lest that sound a tad high-minded, the writer quickly adds: "Our show is not trying to save the world. Our show is trying to delight the audience."
Still, O'Keefe says that suffusing the more superficial aspects of Elle's character with a sense of vulnerability was quite the challenge.
"For me, writing a show like this was darker and scarier and weirder than 'Bat Boy,'" O'Keefe says, joking that his next project will tap back into a bloodier vein.
Actually, there is some carnage in "Legally Blonde." Let's just say that the women of Delta Nu are capable of drawing blood if someone messes with their core values, i.e, don't be dissing the highlights! In the musical, the sorority is re-imagined as a Greek chorus (wink!) that lives in Elle's head.
"It's kind of, like, genius, that concept," giggles Bundy, who has the perky cute pop princess thing seriously down. "They're sort of like Elle's internal conflict."
So the question is, is Broadway ready to go blond? The timing seems right. After all, pink (Elle's signature color) is back, and feel-good escapism never goes out of style. Also, Mitchell is a veteran at the musicals-made-out-of-movies genre, having choreographed both "Hairspray" and "The Full Monty." On the other hand, the trend already may have reached critical mass (see "High Fidelity," "Mary Poppins," "The Wedding Singer"). Sigh.
"There have been a lot of films made into musicals, you know. Kinda. People are going 'Oh, you're doing another one,' " acknowledges Bundy. "But 'Legally Blonde' is done really well. All I can say is I'm pretty confident in the show."
Mitchell chimes in with similar enthusiasm. It's his directorial debut on Broadway, and he says he doesn't "really care what anybody says. I'm having a ball!"
Of course, it's Bundy who must step into Witherspoon's shoes as Elle. Does she feel pressured by the comparison? After all, this is the character that established the future Oscar winner (for "Walk the Line" in 2005) as box office gold.
"I loooooved her in the movie" version of "Legally Blonde," Bundy says. "I think she's an incredible actress, and I'm incredibly grateful for what she did in the movie because people fell in love with the character based on the movie. That's gonna be helpful to me.
"I mean, it's definitely a challenge, but I'm going to do what I think Elle would do. I'm not going to try and copy someone else."
Fer sure, Bundy is no newbie to the business. She originated the part of Amber Von Tussle in "Hairspray," waved Glinda's wand in "Wicked" apres-Kristen Chenoweth and even landed a bit part in the "Dreamgirls" movie. But Elle is her shot to prove herself as a Broadway star or flop big-time.
Much like Elle, she's got it all on the line, and she's not fazed. "I'm up for it!"
Or as Elle might say, "What, like it's hard?"
Reach Karen D'Souza at kdsouza@mercurynews.com or (40
271-3772. 'Legally Blonde'
Book by Heather Hach, music and lyrics by Nell Benjamin and Laurence O'Keefe
If you go
Where: Golden Gate Theatre, 1 Taylor St. at Market Street, San Francisco
When: Previews start Tuesday; show opens Feb. 6 and runs through Feb. 24. Performances at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays
Tickets: $35-$90
Contact: (415) 512-7770 or http://www.shnsf.com
Woof! Grooming stars is no walk in the park
By Pat Craig
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Audio Slideshow - http://bayareanewsgroup.com/multimedia/cct/multimedia/flash/canine_thespians/index.html
Article - http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/16570909.htm
It began, as so many Broadway stories do, with a talent search. Bill Berloni ventured out onto the mean streets of Newark, N.J., to find himself the baddest Chihuahua going.
Berloni, whose theatrical animal expertise goes back to 1976, when he discovered the pooch who would play Sandy in the original "Annie," says finding a stage-savvy Chihuahua is tough work.
But that was the assignment for the musical version of "Legally Blonde," currently in previews at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre. The world-premiere production opens Feb. 7.
"I've never trained any dog this small for a performance," says Berloni, who was hired to find dogs to play Bruiser, the Chihuahua; and Rufus, the English bulldog, in the musical.
"If a show is scary for a big dog, imagine how it is for a Chihuahua," he says. "A Lab might look at us and see a pretty good chance of defending himself, but to a Chihuahua, we look like giants who could step on him -- it's a pretty big world for a Chihuahua."
So that's why it was so important to find the perfect little dog, whose dainty exterior concealed the heart and soul of a gorilla.
He began his search at animal shelters, because he's always used rescue animals in his work. "I wasn't looking for a shy little reserved animal; I was looking for a killer, ready to fight his way out of the kennel."
That's why he went to the Newark shelter; it's in a tough town. And when he got there, he was immediately drawn to Chico, who, shelter people told him, "was a little nippy." Berloni just figured the poor guy was frightened.
"We go out on a walk and he's barking at people, and not afraid of traffic," he says. Chico was quickly adopted into the 15-dog Berloni family, which also includes wife Dorothy and daughter Jenna, 9, both of whom are working with the dogs during the San Francisco run.
For "Legally Blonde," the canine family is rounded out by Chihuahuas Teddy and Boo Boo, and a pair of English bulldogs to play Rufus -- Chloe, and her understudy, Zizi.
"Every other living creature in the show has a standby," says Berloni; "the dogs have to have one, too."
"Legally Blonde" is Berloni's 22nd Broadway show. He's also trained animals for movies, television shows and commercials.
He is one of the most sought-after animal trainers for stage work, since his training methods are designed to teach animals to perform a trick over and over rather than just once, as they would in film work.
His accomplishments are even more impressive when you consider he had no intention of working with animals. His first venture into animal training, he believed, was to be a shortcut to a career as an actor. Berloni was 19 and interning at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut.
"The producer of a new musical called me into his office and asked, 'How would you like to earn your Equity (actors union) card and have a chance to be in the show?'" Berloni recalls. "I thought he had recognized my talent just from watching me paint scenery. But then he told me all I had to do was find and train a dog for us for the new musical."
Someone told him dogs were cheap at the animal shelter, so he visited a nearby shelter and became smitten with a scraggly, sandy-colored mutt. He was also heartsick at the plight of the shelter animals, many of whom would be euthanized. He decided any dogs in his future would come from shelters.
By any standard, the tattered and abused first dog he picked was the absolute wrong choice for any number of reasons. Somehow, though, it worked out for both Berloni and the lucky mutt, because that's the dog that became Sandy in the first production of "Annie." The show was first a hit at the Goodspeed, and then a hit on Broadway.
"So 'Annie' opens, Sandy is a huge star, and I'm a famous animal trainer, and in demand," he says. Within months, he was working with the likes of Mike Nichols and Richard Burton (in "Camelot"), and later, with Susan Stroman and the American Ballet Theatre.
He still lists "actor" on his resume, but admits his "repetition and reward" system of animal training has given him opportunities he'd never have gotten as an actor.
Dogs, no matter how it looks when you see them perform, are not natural actors, Berloni says. However, they are loyal.
"I look for a dog who wants to please his owner," he says. "They perform for their owner, not for the audience. They don't get any affection from the audience."
Dogs can be taught complex tricks, but their style of learning may be confounding to those not working with them.
For example, Chico spent eight weeks working on "Legally Blonde" in a New York rehearsal room. He learned to do all that was asked of him perfectly, but when the situation changes, even a bit, it becomes impossible.
"When he walked into the Golden Gate Theatre, it was like putting him in the middle of Union Square," says Berloni. "He looks up and can't see the walls. There's the amplification, the orchestra and all the sounds of the theater. And we have to desensitize him to that. Dogs learn sort of linearly and really don't have cognitive thought, and when you think about it, working onstage, in itself, is frightening."
Pat Craig is the Times theater critic. Reach him at 925-945-4736 or pcraig@cctimes.com.
COMING SUNDAY
Pat Craig and Times online producer Karl Mondon go behind the scenes in the making of "Legally Blonde," a new Broadway-bound musical, in a special Sunday A&E package and slide-show presentation on www.contracostatimes.com.
joined:9/10/05
joined:
9/10/05
Posted: 1/28/07 at 11:43am