EARNING THE APPLAUSE: Rhiannon and Lauren. |
What with Reese Witherspoon being such a kicky joy in the 2001 film version of Legally Blonde, producers of the musical adaptation must have done a lot of head-scratching over how to compete with that performance.
Here’s an idea!, somebody apparently said, in the boppy spirit of the show. Why not have auditions on MTV?! Kinda like the presidential debates, only with cuter rivals.
In any event, some 4000 potential Elles exercised their saucy smarts in five cities across the country, with the best 50 coming to New York. Forty went home, older but wiser in the ways of early Judy Garland movies, and the last 10 made it to MTV. There were four weeks of competitions and eight auditions broadcast out to the world (or at least the world of occa-sional music videos).
The winner became Elle on Broadway, and the first runner-up got to be her understudy. As you would expect, the cream that floats to the top of such a national search is going to be pretty thick. You can confirm that if you check out the online auditions of the next two runners-up, Rhiannon Hansen and Lauren Ashley Zakrin, 18 and 19, respectively (at legally-blondethe musical.com). Both pack enough perky personality, as well as talent, into their character-based songs to supply another couple of musicals.
Rhiannon is getting to play Margot, the best friend of Elle, in the tour of the musical, and Lauren is in the ensemble and an understudy for Elle, as is Rhiannon. Becky Gulsvig, the Broadway understudy for Elle, has the touring lead.
Taking a break from rehearsal for the premiere engagement, Lauren and Rhiannon are sitting in balcony, imagining the 3000 seats of the great, gilded cavern packed.
“I came into the theater and just broke down,” Rhiannon says of first seeing the inside of PPAC, a 1930s movie palace, “because this is what I love to do and I’m really doing it, I’m really here. There are going to be people in the seats, and they’re going to share the experience that I have throughout the show.”
Neither of them has ever performed before a really big audience. But Lauren has done “tons of musical theater” around her community, an hour north of Detroit, and that taste made her hungry. She studied musical theater performance Western Michigan University for a year before this all came up.
“The thing that gets me is a live audience,” she says. “There’s nothing better than performing before a live audience. The rush, and the response, and the emotional participation that you get is so invigorating and energizing. There is nothing better than the applause at the end of a number.”
Rhiannon has somewhat more experience. She was on stage starting at 11, and went to the American Music and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles right after high school in Utah.
“With a live audience, you can feel their energy,” she says. “I can’t explain it. I love doing film, I love it. But when I’m standing on stage and I can feel the excitement, like literally popping out of the audience, you can just feel the rush of it, it’s like — it’s the most exciting thing in the world.”
