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On paper, the upcoming “Legally Blonde” musical production being put on by the recently rebranded Tri-Valley Theatre Company will be telling the famous tale of the dumb blonde trying to win back her boyfriend by becoming a lawyer.
However, according to members of the cast and the crew, this show will offer much more in terms of a modern look at a classic story, reimagined dance scenes and an underlying story of a person who learns about inner worth.
“You can absolutely come to the show and just kind of enjoy it on a surface level,” Misty Megia, director of the show, told the Weekly. “Or you can also kind of lose yourself in this story and watch a human transform on stage in front of you.”
Based on the 2001 comedy movie and the 2007 stage musical it inspired, “Legally Blonde” is set to debut at the Bankhead Theater in Livermore this Saturday for a three-weekend run. It follows the story of Elle Woods, a sorority queen whose boyfriend dumped her before moving to attend Harvard Law School and how she does all she can to get into the school in order to win him back.
The play will be the first production for TVTC, which was well-known locally under its prior name, Tri-Valley Repertory Theatre.
The theater company underwent the recent rebrand but has maintained that it will continue to build upon the already established theater community in the Tri-Valley.
Austin Andrade, TVTC social media director and one of the cast members who will be playing Kyle, Dewey and a frat boy, told the Weekly that the cool thing about the new TVTC leadership is that it is made up people who have a long history with the troupe when it was under its previous name.
“We’re all just people who love the area and love doing theater,” Andrade said.
A mechanical engineer by day, Andrade was born and raised in Livermore. He had been performing with the theater company under its previous name even since 2012.
While he still has his engineering job, he said that theater is just one of those itches that he can’t give up scratching.
As far as having to juggle multiple characters at once, Andrade said he actually enjoys doing it, even if it has been a little difficult at times.
“Instead of locking into one character that you can just like focus on the entire show, you’re kind of having to juggle multiple and that’s been a lot of fun,” he said.
TVTC artistic director Brian Olkowski told the Weekly that production for the show started back in October. He said that while they have had a lengthy rehearsal period, mainly because of the holiday breaks, the show was looking great as the crew prepared to begin what is known as tech week last Sunday.
Tech week is when the cast and team move from the rehearsal studio in Pleasanton to the actual Bankhead stage so that they can begin running the show in full with all the equipment, lights and set changes.
As far as the cast goes, Olkowski said that while the majority of them were from Livermore and other areas in the Tri-Valley (there are also a lot of people from other areas of the Bay Area), it was a difficult casting process just because of the fact that roughly 90 people had auditioned.
He said he believes the final cast is a strong group of people who have been collaborative and have worked so well together.
“One of my favorite things, just in general about this production, is just how amazing the cast and crew are just seeing them on and off stage and how they gel and how they interact,” Olkowski said.
Cat Reyes, choreographer for the show, also told the Weekly that she has also appreciated how well the cast have been working with her and adding their ideas to the many dance routines that she has planned for the show.
A longtime Bay Area musical theater artist, Reyes has been with the theater company since 2016 and said that she really got into choreography in 2019 after her time performing because she wanted to push herself and other actors to become better overall.
Reyes said that one thing she will be looking forward to in the “Legally Blonde” show is seeing how the audience will react to the modernized takes on a lot of the dance routines that she spent reworking.
“All of the tricks that you kind of see on stage are kind of new stuff that I have seen come out and playing around with it was really fun to do,” she said.
One example is the hip-hop and rhythmic movements that she has incorporated into the show that will hopefully relate to younger crowds who are used to seeing these dances from social media.
Megia said that she wanted to create a collaborative atmosphere with the cast and team so that everyone could come together and find ways to modernize the classic musical.
That’s why she said it was important who she cast in the role of Elle Woods — and it isn’t the typical Reese Witherspoon type.
The lead went to Gwynnevere Cristobal, a resident of Tracy who grew up in Dublin and found a love for theater late in high school. Cristobal, who had always wanted to be in the movies, then became drawn to the stage because there was never anything quite like the sensation of connecting with an audience in real time.
After learning the theater company was rebranding its name and coming back, Cristobal felt the need to get involved, even if they were a bit hesitant at first due to the fact that Elle is usually portrayed as a white blonde woman and Cristobal is Filipina and identifies as non-binary and queer.
But after some reflection, Cristobal knew they needed to go for it.
“I really wanted to prove to myself and prove to other people that a brown person can be a lead for the stereotypical white role,” Cristobal said. “I’ve had some sentiments echoed back to me about seeing another brown person onstage, about how excited they are to see that, especially in the area that we are in.”
That’s why Megia knew from the first moment she met Cristobal that she had found her Elle.
“The kind of archetype of the dumb blonde (has) been around for 250 years … I think it’s so much bigger than that,” she said.
The director said that most people nowadays struggle with impostor syndrome, getting knocked down and having to fight in order to believe in themselves again, which are all themes that the musical addresses.
“It was really important for me to cast somebody that reflected a broader topic for us to discuss, and to let people know that everybody deserves a seat at the table,” Megia said.
“Legally Blonde, The Musical” will debut this Saturday (Jan. 13) and will run on weekends until Jan. 28 for a total of seven shows. For tickets and more information, go to www.livermorearts.org.
