Amber in pink: Amber Davies’s Elle Woods in Legally Blonde The Musical. Picture: Matt Crockett
LEGALLY Blonde The Musical was last decorating a York stage in pink only 14 months ago in York Light Opera Company’s York Theatre Royal production. Now the 2011 Olivier Awards Best New Musical winner returns, even pinker and perkier, in North Yorkshireman Nicolai Foster’s hands in a fizzing, fabulous show shaped at Curve, Leicester, and now touring in tandem with ROYO.
Strictly Come Dancing 2025 finalist Amber Davies leads Foster’s cast in Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Heather Hach’s musical spin on the 2001 Reese Witherspoon film that charts the path of jilted Malibu fashion merchandising student Elle Woods (Davies) as she follows ex-lover Warner (Jamie Chatterton) to Harvard Law School with her cute Chihuahua Bruiser (Sprout) in tow.
Legally Blonde is a sugar rush of an all-American show, bursting with energy and joy, but beneath that E-number surface and the Omigod You Guys excitability, it also releases a surge of female empowerment and delivers a message of self-belief and self-discovery.
Hence the preponderance of women in the full house at Tuesday’s press night, drawn to Elle’s tale of staying doggedly true to herself as her sunshine-suffused Californian positivity rubs up against New York cynicism and Ivy League snobbery, enabling her to defeat all preconceptions to cut the legal mustard.
Welsh actress Davies, winner of the 2017 series of Love Island, brings that winning personality to playing It Girl fashionista-turned-budding legal ace Elle, revelling in all shades of pink, eschewing convention and countering her vulnerability on new terrain with her vitality, warmth and sassy humour.
Davies’s Elle is fun company for audience and fellow students alike (aside from Chatterton’s stuffed-shirt Warner and his judgemental, sourpuss new girlfriend, Annabelle Terry’s Vivienne Kensington). You know from her Strictly exploits that she will move well in Leah Hill’s choreography, while her singing grows more powerful, the more the performance progresses.
You will enjoy how Elle’s burgeoning legal nous is rooted in uncanny instinct and her knowledge of fashion trends and hair culture, rather than in quoting textbooks by rote. This does not make her a law unto herself, but shows how unconventional thinking can win the day, especially when bolstered by her determination to defy stereotypical “blonde” pigeonholing and leap over obstacles, whether preppy Warner and Vivienne or cynical, predatory Harvard professor Callahan (Adam Cooper).
Davies’s Elle has plenty of friends, old and new, to counter her foes. Closest to home are the Greek chorus (Rosanna Harris’s Serena, Remi Ferdinand’s Pilar and Hannah Lowther’s Margot), her Delta Nu sorority sisters, who now represent her inner thoughts in the style of American sports’ cheerleaders. They sizzle in Hill’s choreography in their ever-changing, brightly coloured attire, topped off by their lippy patter.
Elle bonds with fellow Harvard interloper, George Crawford’s principled, corduroy-clad Emmett, and especially with Karen Mavundukure’s trailer-trash hairdresser Paulette Bonafonte, who matches no-nonsense frankness in conversation with powerhouse singing with all the thunder of Ruby Turner.
Ty-Reece Stewart rather underplays the humour in cool-dude USP delivery stud muffin Kyle, Paulette’s sudden, unexpected love interest: a missed opportunity. By contrast, the camp swagger bubbling away throughout surfaces gloriously in the comedic high point of the courtroom number Gay Or European?, as Jamie Tait’s Nikos and Bradley Delarosbel’s Carlos celebrate their love so flamboyantly.
Jocasta Almgill’s pantomime villain Carabosse in York Theatre Royal’s Sleeping Beauty last winter is still fresh in the memory, and now she brings bags of character and high energy to exercise-video guru Brooke Wyndham, who is standing trial for murder.
Act Two surpasses Act One, not least because Almgill’s Brooke gives it such an adrenaline boost with the opening skipping number Whipped Into Shape, danced with her fellow inmates. Still to come is the best-known routine, Bend And Snap, wherein Davies’s Elle teaches Mavundukure’s Paulette the moves so resolutely.
Foster’s direction is full of panache and punch, even a sprinkling of pathos, and Hill’s choreography crackles like electricity, while Colin Richmond’s set design savours the power of pink and Tom Rogers’ costumes embrace every colour, without ever putting pink in the shade. Cerys McKenna’s musical direction brings out the fizz in effervescent songs that are almost giddy with excitement.
Foster’s Legally Blonde will leave you feeling tickled pink.
Made At Curve presents Legally Blonde The Musical, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Thursday and Saturday matinees. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.