20-Dec-22 Legally Tuesday

[DiveMilw]

For some reason I have been thinking about the musical "Legally Blonde".  Perhaps because I hear it once in a while on Sirius XM's Broadway channel.  My first reaction is always to dismiss the show as fluff.  BUT I watch it nearly every time I run across it on Youtube or elsewhere.  It is a well written show and very well performed.  It is a reminder to be open-minded about shows and being too much of a theater snob closes doors.  Of course, that is a big message in the show (being open minded, not the part about being a theater snob) so it's not too hard to "stumble" upon that realization.  

Today I learned how to close various aircraft doors.  And how to teach others how to close those doors.  There was also practice "opening doors" in an ergonomic way which avoids twisting actions.  We have some awesome videos from a consultant who used to be an Olympic weight lifter to show how to best/correctly use your muscles and avoid injury.  

[scenicdesign71]

Looking back, it was sort of a silver age of movie-to-musical adaptations.  Producers -- basically the movies' IP rights holders? -- had the intelligence to hire adaptors from the world of musical theatre with high levels of training, skill and experience, as well as talent.

I'm ambivalent about the more recent trend of "crossover" artists from the nontheatrical pop-music world trying their hand, often ill-advisedly, at Broadway.  But back then, I remember thinking that a lot of those shows (Legally Blonde specifically struck me this way, when I saw it on MTV in 2007) were much, much better than they probably -- as pre-sold, tourist-friendly titles -- had any particular need to be.