Interview: LEGALLY BLONDE: THE MUSICAL at Garden Theater

When she first tried out for a community theater production of LEGALLY BLONDE: THE MUSICAL, Laura Overby was convinced she was going to land the starring role of Elle Wood.

Overby had some strikes against her: she wasn’t blonde, she didn’t look like Reese Witherspoon, and she was only in the eighth grade, almost four years younger than the second youngest person in the cast.

Overby didn’t get the role, being cast instead as one of Elle’s sorority sisters. She will be making up for lost time by playing Elle Woods in the Short North Stage’s upcoming production of LEGALLY BLONDE.

“I remember thinking, ‘You know what? I didn’t get the leading role, but the show will come around again eventually,’’ she said with a laugh. “And six years later… Oh God! Has it been that long? Not only am I playing Elle but I am performing it in a regional theater like SNS. It’s a huge deal for me.”

Overby will be part of a 22-person cast for the SNS production, which runs July 11 through Aug. 11 at the Garden Theater (1187 N. High Street in downtown Columbus). Overby joins Vera Allen (who plays Paulette), Ryan Boda (Professor Callahan), James Oblak (Warner Huntington III), Lake Wilburn (Emmett Forrest), and Sydney Freihofer (Vivenne Kensingston).

Like Overby, Allen said she has longed to play Paulette, a role made famous by Jennifer Coolidge in the movie.

“This is one of my dream shows and one of my dream roles,” Allen said. “LEGALLY BLONDE came out in a pivotal time in my life and I remember connecting with its characters.”

The show marks a bit of a homecoming for director Dionysia Williams Velazco, who choreographed the show for the Columbus Children’s Theater as a part of their college preprofessional program nearly 10 years ago.

“It was so much fun,” Williams Velazco said. “It was one of those shows where a lot of people learned who I was.

“Since then, I have had a lot of friends go in and out of the different LEGALLY BLONDE national tours. It’s amazing how long this show has been around.”

LEGALLY BLONDE first charmed audiences as a movie in 2001. In the movie, Elle Woods’ perfect, pinktastic world is turned upside down when her boyfriend Warner Huntington III dumps her before heading off to Harvard Law School. Woods follows him out to Cambridge, Mass. and enrolls at the prestigious school determined to win him back. Instead, she overcomes being dismissed and overlooked by her professors and her fellow students to become a successful lawyer.

The movie grossed over $96 million and was voted as “Choice Summer Movie” by the Teen Choice Awards.

Six years after the movie LEGALLY BLONDE came out, Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin (music and lyrics) and Heather Hach (book) revised the movie into a musical. In 2007, the show was nominated for eight Tony awards, but didn’t win any. (SPRING AWAKENINGS was selected as the best musical that year.) In 2009, LEGALLY BLONDE’s North American tour group won all three of the categories it was nominated in, including best new touring musical, by Touring Broadway Awards.

Williams Velazco isn’t surprised by the show’s enduring popularity. “It has such a great message,” she said. “It's a very layered show. There’s this kind of ‘Barbie Girl Power’ aspect of it -- women can do anything. People are more than what you just think we are by our looks or all other preconceived notions.”

The Short North Stage hopes to challenge its audience’s preconceived notions of what LEGALLY BLONDE should look like as well. The production made a conscious choice to cast a person of color in a role that Reese Witherspoon made so popular.

When SNS was putting together its schedule for the 24-25 season, there was a void of shows focusing on the African-American experience with the exception of AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ (Sept. 5-22).

“Part of our mission is that when people come to our theater, we want them to be able to see themselves on stage,” Williams Velazco said. “We made it clear when we were casting, that we were going to go in this direction.”

According to Williams Velazco, this is not a revolutionary idea. One of the first times LEGALLY BLONDE was performed in the UK, Elle was played by a black actress.

At the auditions, it became clear Overby was the right choice.

“Some people might say, ‘Well, she's not naturally blonde and the show is called LEGALLY BLONDE,’” said Overby who is part Indonesian and part African American. “How I see it is Elle is continually objectified for her looks because she’s a blonde. This is another way people can see this message in a different light. You rarely get to hear the success story of a biracial woman.”

Overby said Woods shows how people should treat each other.

“She kills everyone with kindness,” she said. “She tries to figure out a solution the right way without having to put anybody down. You can't genuinely hate her.

“There are people at the beginning who don’t like her because they think she is like Malibu Barbie at Harvard. They eventually grow to like her.”

Although the tough-talking Bostonian Paulette seems to be the opposite of Woods, Allen believes her character is pulled into Woods’ tractor beam of friendliness.

“The difference between her and Elle is she has made her life and (Woods) hasn’t yet,” Allen said. “Elle is trying to follow a man to make her life complete while Paulette left a man to make her own life. Their relationship is so very cool.

“Paulette has all these wonderful, funny bits and one liners, but she also has many layers to her.”

Mastering Paulette’s thick Boston accent wasn’t too difficult for Allen because she had used one in productions of FOOTLOOSE and WHITE CHRISTMAS.

After living in France and Italy and working on Norwegian Cruises, Cremean said accents have come very easily to her.

“When I was in college, I studied opera, which requires a lot of accents and a lot of languages,” she said. “It’s just one of those things that came very naturally to me.”

One of the lessons from LEGALLY BLONDE is one of perseverance and both Allen and Overby have had their share of hurdles to overcome.

Allen said her toughest critic is the one she faces in the mirror every morning.

“Even for someone who has been performing their whole life, I am so hard on myself,” she said. “I think I often sabotage myself during an audition.

“The normal auditioning process is difficult, but after COVID, it has been so hard to get back into the swing of things. It’s not like riding a bike.”

Growing up, Overby struggled with her confidence in dance. Her competitors often told her she’d never make it in “the business” because she wasn’t a dancer.

“I've always wanted to play Elle, but since it is such a dance heavy role, I've always had that voice in the back of my head saying, ‘You’ll never be able to pull off a role like this,’” she said. “It took me a long time to fully understand I need to give myself grace every now and then.”

Photo Credit: Fyrebird Media

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