Tuesday, July 22, 2008

YES THAT'S MY NAME UP IN BLACK AND WHITE, MAYBE I'M DOING SOMETHING RIGHT: Omigod you guys, we have a new Elle Woods! On Wednesday, Bailey Hanks will begin her six-month Broadway run in the Great White Way's pinkest role. I've thought for a few weeks that the outcome was inevitable, making last night's finale feel more like a coronation than a competition. So when I discovered this morning that frequent commenter Marsha had a diametrically opposed take as to who should be the next Elle, we obviously had to invite her to sing Autumn's praises. (Caveat: neither of us has ever actually seen Legally Blonde: The Musical, although we are both big fans of Legally Blonde: The Movie.)

Marsha: I think the judges got it wrong. I thought both Autumn and Bailey did a very strong job with the final audition. But in the end, I think Autumn was the right choice. It seems to me to be easier to turn Autumn into a better dancer than to turn Bailey into a better singer, but either way, they both need work. So it turns on who I think was better for the role. I found Autumn to be compelling in the role – I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and she acted circles around Bailey. The scene work that Autumn did had so much more depth and resonance. You believe her pain when Warner leaves her, and you believe all her self-doubt. Bailey hams it up even when she’s supposed to be serious, and has no emotional maturity in the role at all. (Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, for the word “schmacting.”) Perhaps most importantly, Elle has to be believable as a smart girl who simply never had to be anything but pretty until now. From the beginning of the show, she’s smart – but only about certain things. She has a very high GPA in fashion merchandising, knows all about half-loop top stitches, and takes her role in the sorority very seriously. She just never had to dig into her inner smartitude. But she’s smart from day one, and you have to believe she’s always been, inside, the girl she becomes at Harvard. She has to be the smart girl with the ditzy exterior, not the ditz who grows a brain. Autumn has those layers, she acts beautifully, and she has the vocal chops to not only sing the hell out of the songs but to show Elle’s character in them as well. Bailey, on the other hand, is very one dimensional. She’s young, she’s cute, she can dance. But her acting is weak, and her singing is sub-par for Broadway. Her Elle is a ditz both inside and out. I’ll agree that she’s likeable (to a degree – I have to say I didn’t like her very much during this show, so it’s translating into me not liking her Elle as much) and watchable, but she has no inner core of maturity and strength. There’s no sense with Bailey that Elle is finding something inside herself that was always there – because in Bailey, it never is there at all. Bailey’s Elle is fluff. Autumn’s Elle is a real woman. But that’s why I’m not a Broadway casting director.

Kim: Yes, yes, Autumn is a better singer than Bailey. But I find Autumn to be a big black hole of charisma and as such have never been able to imagine her as the eminently lovable Elle Woods. We don't need to see an inner smart girl needing to escape the shackles of blondeness to be taken seriously -- Elle becomes a success on her own terms. Law becomes another part of the Elle canon, alongside the fashion and flirting expertise. Ultimately, I think that Bailey's success in the role will hinge on the degree to which Jerry Mitchell can direct her into some additional depth (the cutting of the schmacting). What she's got going for her on stage is star quality -- the extraspecial zhuzh that makes the audience (or me, at least) watch her even when there are thirty other people on the stage. You can coach the acting and the singing (and her singing is perfectly fine, even if it's not Autumn-quality), but the star quality is either there or it's not. (This, incidentally, is why Rhiannon survived so long despite her obvious flaws in both the singing and the dancing realms.) I can't say for sure that Bailey will become a Broadway star out of this experience, but I do think she can make an audience smile for three hours -- and at the end of the day, Elle Woods is someone who makes people smile.

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