It’s pink dresses, blonde tresses and snooty students all around, as Paul Xuereb finds that Legally Blonde delivers the laughs.

Directed with an excellent eye for the musical’s comic qualities, as well as for its musical and spectacular ones, by Steve Casaletto, Legally Blonde does not rank anywhere near the great musicals in the repertory. However, it is certainly good theatre, with a clever and sometimes witty vibe that appeals above all to young audiences.

One of the wittiest things about the show is the introduction of a comic Greek chorus of pretty and agile dancers

It should also provide a bit of fun to older people in the audience, even if they may be stunned by Paul Abela’s band, known for producing good music but that needs to cut down on the decibels in a small auditorium like the Manoel Theatre’s. A good technical rehearsal should have taken good care of this matter, surely.

The plot belongs in part to the genre of musicals about college students, but holds one’s attention much more when we see a group of law students have their first encounter with real life as interns for one of their professors.

The principal character is Elle Woods (Jo Caruana) the very popular president of a sorority at UCLA in California, where she has been having much fun but little education. Her boyfriend Wayne breaks up with her to study law on the east coast, where he has a “serious girl” who loves him. The mortified Elle decides to follow him to Harvard, no less, and win him back, in the process cleverly getting herself a place in the law school too.

Elle overcomes initial problems at this snooty university, most of which are created by her blonde hair and pink outfits. She is advised by Emmett (John Montanaro) to take her studies more seriously, and suddenly she becomes a hit through her innate cleverness and perceptiveness. These qualities aren’t lost on her professor, Callahan, (Roger Tirazona), whom she helps dispose of a lying witness in a murder case Callahan is defending.

However, she also discovers that being Callahans’s favourite means you have to sleep with him. She slaps Callahan, who dismisses her, and she nearly leaves Harvard but is prevented by Emmett, who is in love with her, and by another friend, the hairdresser Paulette (Pia Zammit), whom Elle has helped.

Elle decides to pursue her law studies but as herself – pink dresses and all – and makes a legal coup when Brooke (Larissa Bonaci), whom Callahan has been defending in her trial for murder, ditches him and takes on Elle as her counsel. Elle gets her off the hook by cleverly showing, with the technical aid of Paulette, that the main witness against Brooke has clearly been lying. The rest of the musical showers happy endings on all deserving characters.

When it is not too noisy, the music is enjoyable, even if all too often it is not easy to make out the words being sung.

One of the wittiest things about the show is the introduction of a comic Greek chorus of pretty and agile dancers, meant to be members of Elle’s former sorority. These are invisible to all characters save Elle, whom they urge again and again to be positive. Caruana’s Elle has the personality that enables her to dominate most of the events. Her slim figure and ‘legally blonde’ hair house a strong personality that enables her to overcome the humiliations of a loved one’s infidelity, the treachery of colleagues, and the dastardly behaviour of Callahan. She sings well and is a neat dancer.

Above all, she shows that the love she likes to sing about is what truly drives her: whether in pursuit of the undeserving Warner, in helping her friend Paulette deal with an unpleasant ex-lover, or in putting her own career at stake when she rejects the advances, lustful and not loving, of her professor. This is surely one of this year’s most attractive performances in our musical theatre.

As Elle’s men, Montanaro comes out as a steady, honest and loyal young man whose love for Elle does not let him try to oust Warner from her affections. He wisely lets events do this job and his reward comes when at the end Elle goes down on bended knee and proposes to him.

Daniel Lake’s Warner is as good-looking as he is unreliable and fickle to two girls in succession; I loved the moment when he finds himself to his chagrin asked to act as coffee boy for Callahan.

Tirazona does not do much singing, which is a pity, but his one big piece about ‘blood in the water’ brings out his callousness in dealing with any kind of opposition. His Callahan is a faintly sinister figure whose come-uppance the audience enjoys.

Zammit is amusing, if not terribly Irish, as Paulette and, as usual, sings very well. Krista Paris, who plays Warner’s girl Vivienne, makes a good transition from her bitchiness towards Elle to being a belated friend to her when Warner has ditched her too.

Bonaci (her flame-coloured hair concealed by a neat blonde wig) as Brooke, the girl Elle saves from a murder charge, also does well in this smallish role. Michael Mangion and Greta Psaila Savona also fleshed out their tiny roles as Elle’s parents.

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