Dispatches from the Musical: January 

 The Masterman musical has returned for its 18th consecutive year, emerging from the tunnel of the pandemic with a widely anticipated showing of Legally Blonde: The Musical. Musical announcements tend to be the second-most anticipated decision at Masterman, after high-school admissions, and this year was no exception. Competing rumors, usually beginning with the obviously incorrect statement of Doc told me that we’re doing… spread like wildfire, though the initial leak of the Legally Blonde book on Google Docs suggested an earlier answer than other years, despite the hasty cover-ups of the music department trying to share other red herring musical books, giving us Elle Woods, muted for the sake of the middle school. 

Like any high-excitement event involving dogs in purses and cutthroat competition for the spotlight, the initial days of the musical were fraught with paranoia and strife. The water under the bridge from Pippin carried downstream and propelled the rumor mill to come up with bizarre allegations, the most outrageous of which was that someone told someone else that Ms. Neu told someone very reliable that Lauryn Ciardullo and Meredith Drasnin, the graduated stars of last year’s musical, were returning to take up the roles of Elle and Emmett. This necessarily implied that the sideburned Jakob Kleeman was coming back from wherever he is to play Warner and that the dog from Pippin was reprising its role as the dog. All of these assertions are naturally absurd, though Lauryn Ciardullo did not help this rumor by changing their Instagram status to “dreaming about playing Emmett in Legally Blonde”, which we will presume to be nothing more than a coincidence and not evidence of Devon Sinclair’s revenge cabal against Masterman for subjecting him to Shrek The Musical. 

But we are in a better place now! The actors will be phenomenal and be heard, and the orchestra will have no idea how to play the music, but we will sure as shooting try at least a little. The Legally Blonde score is infamous in the realm of musicals for being incredibly challenging and whimsically-written– take for example, eight bars of silence marked ‘sourly’ or the tempo instruction “Dreamgirls on steroids”. Some people in orchestra are succeeding more than others. Tino Karakousis, playing Keyboard 2, despite proclaiming himself last year to be Tino “Carry the Orchestra”-kousis, has managed to successfully play Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” while transitioning from Full Orchestra to Show Orchestra but is entirely unable to play monophonic melodies in tune or on beat, regardless of how sourly they are meant to be played. The highlight of orchestra practices naturally is not playing the music but Ms. Neu reading out the dialogue and none of the songs making sense. One crucial fermata hovers over the words “Old Valley Mall”, though they do not seem to connect with any other idea expressed in their vicinity. 

In the vicinity of the musical, it is evident that Stage Crew is also back, considering that they have yet again chosen to leave their sets in front of my locker. I, unlike the Meredith-Lauryn whisperers, do not mean to make absurd allegations, but I am beginning to see a pattern. I have not heard anything yet about sets or lighting, though I suspect that they will not have any use for swords or castles this year. In fact, Stage Crew, I challenge you to incorporate the cauldron of fire into this year’s show. If you do, then you win bragging rights. There would not really be much need for bragging rights, considering that you are competing with Tech Crew and miscellaneous parents, and you outnumber those two combined ten-one and have Mr. Gilken. The stage crew room has been changed due to asbestos, so naturally, the art teachers are now using the dark room/stage crew room as storage, and stage crew has found a new home, presumably with HSA grant money, which they will use for a scale model of Harvard Law School that after the end of the run, will be placed on a plinth next to Einstein’s head. 

Speaking of grant money, in lieu of stage lights and performance rights, Masterman has received a mystifying “wig grant”. A “wig professional”, which is a full-time job, has been brought on to teach students about wigs and how to care for them. I have not been able to locate anyone who has signed up to be a wig assistant, but considering that the costumes are hauled out of the projector room on the balcony, this is a significant upgrade for Masterman. Previously for characters that needed wigs, I was held down over the art room sink and shorn with gas money compensation. For all parties involved, our circumstances are looking significantly less patchy.

As for the actual musical, everyone has been cast, and practices are well underway. To capitalize on the appeal of the musical, the cast has been prioritizing dance numbers and more challenging scenes first, which may be a frustration for aspiring thespians but certainly makes this musical more engaging initially than previous years. Censors in charge of the musical have been forced, though, to make numerous cuts, as this musical tends to fall more on the Pippin side of risque than Shrek the Musical or Annie, though without the fundamental awkwardness of Pippin and instead with a greater goofy/slapstick sense of humor than a bawdy line sandwiched between a plaintive ballad and cultish auto-de-fe. Some choreography has been deemed eyebrow-raising, and lines will certainly be cut, as may a character or two that might not sit well with the Masterman community. 

Unlike the metaphysical ouroboros that Pippin took itself for, Legally Blonde is mere entertainment. There is no existentialism besides the existential dread of being abandoned and coping with the reality of having a dog poop in your purse. Someone has tried to make a case for a deep analysis, but the only metaphor that Elle Woods represents is the addition of passion to reason and the legal consequences of blind infatuation. But regardless of any subliminal points, no one intends for it to be anything more than entertainment. I am beginning to suspect that Legally Blonde throws all of its enjoyable weight behind its weighty enjoyability and not any kind of cogent plot or dialogue- but instead that it is incredibly entertaining. While Elle Woods does have a 4.0 in fashion merchandising, it does not make her more or less entertaining- it is merely a brief joke in a musical that is merely fun. No enjoyment is being thrown out for the sake of a point and if there is a point, it will be lost on an audience too busy watching whatever sanitized choreography will replace bending and snapping. No matter the bent of the Masterman student, I can assure that despite the best efforts of the orchestra, you will enjoy Legally Blonde, or at least not object.