Vanessa Finney: For those who aren't familiar with the story, give us a little synopsis.
Lauren Blair: First of all, Elle Woods is finishing undergrad, and she's been with her boyfriend for a few years, her boyfriend Warner, and she's thinking that she's going to get engaged. And he says, 鈥淲e're not getting engaged. I'm going to Harvard Law School on the other side of the country,鈥� and it breaks her heart. And in an attempt to win him back, she gets herself into Harvard Law School. And she gets out to Boston and finds out that her former boyfriend now has a new girlfriend, and she's sort of lost. And she needs to find her way and figure out who she is, where she fits in the world. And along the way, she makes a lot of really good friends that support her for who she is. And she realizes at the end, 鈥淚 need to take care of myself, this is now my journey.鈥� So she learns more about herself. And her journey shifts and it becomes more about who she is, as an individual, not who she is, as a partner.
VF: That's true. That is one of the through lines. That's sort of her arc as she grows. And I'm going to play one of the songs from early on in the show, just to show her starting point. Here's the song 鈥淥migod You Guys鈥� in Legally Blonde at the Oregon Cabaret Theatre.
[Clip of 鈥淥migod You Guys鈥漖
VF: So that starts the show, right?
LB: Yes, Elle鈥檚 expectation is that she's going to get engaged, and she has her girlfriends help her find the perfect dress. And they're all getting ready for this beautiful night that she thinks will end in a proposal. There is a huge bond of friendship that I love throughout this story. Even when she moves away from LA to Boston, her Delta Nu sisters become a Greek chorus in her mind and support her along the way. So the bonds of womanhood become an arc throughout. And they rebuild this especially at the end with some of the friends that she makes at Harvard Law as well.
VF: And some surprising friends, as we'll learn. So another theme is the idea obviously, of someone being dismissed as unserious based on his or her looks. Does that story ring true for you?
LB: Yeah, it's one of the reasons I was very excited to take the show on. Yes, I鈥檓 naturally blonde and have dealt with some of the things - the assumptions that come with that: being unserious, being less intelligent, being less reliable, being a little bit easy. So knowing myself and thinking, 鈥淗ow dare anyone make that preconceived notion based on how I was born?鈥� you know, is something that I just want to keep sharing. And I love that this movie turned into a musical because there's something about even have adding the dance and the music on the song that like boosts the message even more for me. There's this thing that they say we say in the theater, which is, when you can't say it, you sing it. And when you can't sing it, you dance it. So because it's such a huge dance-heavy musical, I just feel like there's a way to tell so much story through all three of those things.
VF: Absolutely. Talk about that. So you're choreographer as well. So what was your approach? Obviously, this is a little different from the Broadway version. It's a much smaller cast.
LB: I don't spend a lot of time watching the Broadway shows when I'm working on a show because I believe in intellectual property. I believe that the choreographer who did it on Broadway was there to work with those people. And it's not up to me to copy that. It's up to me to figure out what my work is with my people, and what makes them look incredible. Obviously, I have seen some clips from the Broadway show. We're doing the show with maybe less than half of the original cast. Most of the time the jump ropers, or at least 15, not four. But that's part of the challenge of working with the Cabaret: How do we take these really big fun shows and still do them, but within our capacity?
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
