By Angelina Tang
On March 14th, 15th, and 16th, Williamsville North High School performed the musical Legally Blonde to resounding success.
Legally Blonde, which is based on the novel by Amanda Brown and musical in 2001, tells the story of Elle Woods, a blonde sorority girl at UCLA whose boyfriend breaks up with her for not being serious enough. She follows him to Harvard Law School to prove she can be serious, and her experience pursuing law and how that eventually changes her character ensues. It’s fun, it’s loud, and it’s very upbeat.
Auditions took place for the musical in late November, following North’s play Dracula in October and a series of vocal and dance workshops throughout November. The musical’s vocal ensemble was directed by Mr. Young. The cast list did shift a little since it originally came out, but in the end, the actors for the leading characters Elle Woods (Anna Campanella), Warner (Jairus Drayton), Emmett (Patrick Schule), Professor Callahan (Salvatore DeFranceso), and Paulette (Charlotte Levine) were all very confident and really got into their parts.
Vocal and blocking rehearsals began after the holiday break. Some of the numbers of the musical were basically directed through dance and movement, particularly the cheerleading sequence in “What You Want” and the exercise sequence in “Whipped into Shape.” The Delta Nu sorority members, a.k.a. Greek Chorus, featured in a lot of the more performative choreographies–one of them was Kai Park, who played Margot of Delta Nu and also performed in two of North’s previous musicals. Regarding the rehearsal process, they said, “Our choreographer, Ms. Cavanagh, would teach us the choreography once and after that we typically just practiced it on our own time. Rehearsals were generally a bit tiring, but seeing the musical come together in the end makes all of our hard work pay off.”
The pit orchestra had also been hard at work since January, conducted by Mr. Buckle and consisting of the drumset, auxiliary percussion, guitars, keyboards, violins, cello, bass, flute, piccolo, clarinet, oboe, trombone, trumpet, and alto sax. Mrs. Salvatore and Mr. Parisi also played in the pit. According to senior Swapnil Roy, who played the drumset and has a plethora of pit experience, Legally Blonde’s repertoire was quite difficult to assemble for many reasons, including the difficulty of the string instrument parts. Leading up to the show, though, he said that they “settled into a groove… and it [sounded] terrific thanks to everyone’s hard work!”
A great deal of the musical experience was also created by the stage and the set, which stage crew managed, as directed by Mr. Percy. The physical set that was moved on and off the stage was made out of wood by the construction crew, which they build entirely from scratch each year. The paint crew then brought each of the pieces to life. The overall construction took a month to complete, but it was well worth it, as the largest set piece, the Delta Nu sorority house, was two stories high and featured functional windows, doors, and stairs that could be danced upon. All of the set pieces were also moved very efficiently on and off stage by the backstage crew.
Photograph by Erin Devantier, North Musical 2024 by Erin DeVantier (pixieset.com)
Tech Week, the week of March 4th, was when these three components were put together. For the ensemble, this meant getting accustomed to the sound of the pit orchestra rather than a recording, and for the pit, this meant getting used to actor cues and the leads’ voices singing along. Rehearsal certainly wasn’t easy, with many of them ending at around 9 P.M.. “We had to change certain things last minute to help the show flow better,” Kai says in retrospect. It was also difficult “having to move slowly… and going back to do scenes over and over again because of all the lighting cues and scene changes.” Practice makes perfect, though, and it showed in the final performances. On the other hand, for stage crew, it was a lot of “Monster [energy drinks], crying, and yelling at each other,” according to junior Brady Cline, who helped run backstage mic wrangling and set handling; he has also run the construction crew and worked the sound board for previous North productions. Despite all of the stress, “at the end of the rehearsal we always come out better than we [were]!” Kai adds, “[It] gets us hyped for the show because we finally get to put the cast, pit, and crew together.”
Of course, all of that hard work paid off. The shows were amazing, with multiple nights selling out. The choreography was amazing, and the jokes were well received–Kyle the UPS man, who was played by Joseph Sankoh, was a hit with the audience, as were the real dogs who played Elle and Paulette’s pets. The pit sounded fantastic, and the stage crew did an amazing job with the gorgeous lighting. There were next to no microphone errors, either. Brooke Wyndham (Jillian Goehle)’s singing during her exercise sequence kicking off the second act was also particularly impressive.
Of course, it’s not just the final performance that matters–the community that musical season creates every year is invaluable. As someone who had been in the pit all four years of his high school career, Swapnil says, “I [looked] forward to it every year and it [was] always a blast… I know that it’s time for other people to replace me next year but it holds a special place in my heart.” It’s not just within the pit, or within the ensemble, that such connections were made–for Brady, the most memorable part of the show was “working with friends to have our show running as smoothly as possible, even with all of the hiccups we can have during rehearsal.” It was a team effort that was only made so successful thanks to the cooperation of the ensemble, crew, and pit. Legally Blonde was a labor of love, and in case you missed it, mark your calendars to go to North’s musical next year! You are sure to adore it.
