The Truth About ‘Legally Blonde’

Yesterday, we played an inter-Web shell game: Under three shells were underhanded falsehoods about Legally Blonde: The Musical. But under the fourth shell was a precious teardrop of truth. Care to play? To recap:

(A) Legally Blonde’s producers are steamed at the Tony Awards for not allowing the cast to perform during its broadcast, the premier national showcase for Broadway’s best.

(B) Recent Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire refuses to admit that he was brought in as a script doctor a couple of weeks before the show opened on Broadway.

(C) After she proved her pipes in 2005’s Walk the Line, producers attempted to woo Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon to tread the boards, but she rejected the offer.

(D) During previews in San Francisco, local feminists protested the production as being derogatory toward women, specifically the celebration of sorority stereotypes.

THE TRUTH:
(A) The Tonys have nominated Laura Bell Bundy, the star of Legally Blonde: The Musical, for a Best Actress in a Musical award, but her show was snubbed for Best Musical. According to Tony rules, only shows nominated for Best Musical can perform on the telecast, an invaluable advertisement for Broadway to the tens of dozens of people that tune in. A crackerjack Tony performance can mean the difference between a hit and a box-office disaster. Tony producers are going claw to claw over whether to allow the casts of unnominated shows like Legally Blonde and LoveMusik to perform, and poor CBS, caught in the middle, just wants people to watch Broadway’s babes flash their jazz hands for Middle America. To which we ask: But what of The Pirate Queen? —John DeVore