On Thursday night, March 3rd, John F. Kennedy Memorial High School debuted this year’s spring musical, Legally Blonde.
Legally Blonde tells the tale of a young UCLA college student, Elle Woods(Portrayed by both Sydney McGowan and Lindsey Dress) who chases after the “love of her life”, Warner(Gabriel Dilone), at Harvard Law school. She goes to ridiculous measures before realizing the “love of her life” isn’t really the love of her life and much more.
The quality of the JFK auditorium which was very nice and comfortable. JFK’s pit band was very good, which is expected of JFK, who is well-known for their exceptional band and chorus programs.
The female leads were all very talented singers, as well as great actors. The males actors, when singing, seemed to be losing steam in comparison to the girls. Every lead role was well-portrayed, as they were all great actors.
The plot and dialogue was very humorous and quite funny. I found myself laughing a lot at the jokes and references made.
The ensemble was very good, as all the characters seemed to have their own distinctive personalities. Also, the choreography was flashy and very coordinated, hats off to the choreographer for that.
I enjoyed some of the songs because they were catchy and easy to follow. I went home singing some of the songs I recalled in the car.
The biggest issues, however, weren’t the actors or the pit, they were in the stage crew and tech areas. The stage crew was very uncoordinated and the set changes took much too long. One set change in particular had the audience wondering if there was another act in between. The actors who were using microphones had very many issues with the mics falling off of their faces due to the use of masking tape, rather than the standard face tape used to keep the microphones in place. A few actors had their mics hanging off the side of their faces and the audience was not able to hear a single word these actors were saying/singing. It took away from the show, as the audience missed an entire measure of a song due to this problem.
Fortunately, the parts missed were not crucial parts of dialogue or the punch line of a joke/song. The show is profane at certain parts, so I do recommend that kids under the age of 13 refrain from attending. Some of the references may be suggestive at times as well. However, most of the audience seemed to be high school students and parents so there was no trouble in the humor area.
I absolutely enjoyed some of the characters’ personalities. The lead characters were very well-portrayed and the actors did a phenomenal job with getting into their characters. My favorite probably had to be Kyle the UPS Delivery guy just because of how funny his first appearance in the show was. Overall, I do hope to see more shows like this one from JFK Memorial High School soon.
