It's safe to say from the outset that Legally Blonde is definitely one for the girls. While the considerable number of ripped and buffed young men prancing about on stage in little shorts might also appeal to other sections of the theatregoing community, this fable of girl power is a perfect night out for the ladies. With the 90% female audience around me screaming with pleasure throughout in a very particular way, I felt about as comfortable as an imam at an Ann Summers party.
In case you missed the original (and funny) 2001 movie with Reese Witherspoon, the story concerns one Elle Woods, a little rich girl from Malibu. On the eve of his going off to Harvard law school, her boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, dumps her. As he explains, she's just not up to his standards. His brother has recently married a Vanderbilt, for heaven's sake. Muffy Vanderbilt, to be precise. This sends Elle into a near- terminal "shame spiral".
She soon rallies, however, and goes after him, accompanied by her "Greek chorus" of Rodeo Drive girlfriends. She secures an unlikely place at Harvard herself, turning up swathed in her signature pink, chihuahua under her arm, amid the disapproving looks of spoddy preppies and corduroyed dullards. Warner is already rehitched, to the bitchy, glacial Miss Vivienne Kensington. Can Elle win back her man, triumph in the legal profession, remain popular and convince people she's really serious without having to "wear black when nobody's dead"?
Eventually, she gets involved in a landmark legal case involving a terrifying fitness trainer, Brooke Wyndham (Aoife Mulholland), author of the bestselling Whip Your Way to Tighter Buns. Here, Elle's detailed knowledge of hair-styling techniques plays a key role. She may not know about Roe v Wade, but she does know all about perms.
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Comparisons are inevitable. The film wasn't a musical, so it had a lot more astute and witty dialogue. There were great jokes about America's east/west divide, most of them absent here. I also missed the man-hating feminist lesbian Enid Wexler, now no more than a walk-on part. In the movie, she objects to the use of the term "semester", saying it derives from the word semen (it doesn't) and should be changed to "ovester". That kind of thing, it seems, would go way over our heads here, so instead we have a lot of songs, often so lame you've forgotten them even while they're still going.
The second half of the show is tighter and more satisfyingly satirical than the first, peaking with a barn-storming rendition of a number with the refrain: "Is he gay or European?" Some good jokes survive: Elle being the founder of the California-based charity Shop for a Cause, or her horrified observation that, over on the East Coast, the girls all have different noses.
The cast are wonderfully lively throughout, as is Jerry Mitchell's direction and choreography. If Sheridan Smith, as Elle, isn't quite such eye candy as Reese Witherspoon, nor in quite the right age bracket, she's still a lot of fun. She uses a comic screech to great effect and, although Elle's not a girl to weep much, insisting always on being a "beacon of positivity", on the one occasion she does blub, it's hilarious: a kind of strangulated baby gurgle that made me want to see her cry a lot more.
Peter Davison is surprisingly convincing as the heavyweight shark of a lawyer, Professor Callahan, with his own billion-dollar legal firm; and Jill Halfpenny is touching as the manicurist, Paulette. But it's Chris Ellis-Stanton, in the minor role of Kyle, the ridiculously hunky UPS delivery man, who almost steals the show. Wearing tight-fitting shorts, short-sleeved shirt and big boots, he executes a perfect parody of a manly stride, turning sharply on the spot and marching relentlessly everywhere like a man on a serious mission, even though he's only delivering a parcel. His masculine gravitas, pale blue eyes and bulging thigh muscles have the girls on stage almost fainting away with desire. "Like walking porn," one of them murmurs. I doubt you will ever see a UPS delivery man quite as funny as this.
For the most part, the comedy here is pretty broad, and this is not a show with any anxieties about getting too silly. It's all good-hearted fun, though, if you can switch off various parts of your brain circuitry for 2½ hours, and it's hard not to emerge at the end wearing a smile. Legally Blonde is critic-proof, anyhow, having taken £2.5m over here already. Just watch out for teetering stilettos as you leave, and for the dense build-up of perfume-based solvents and fixatives in the narrow exit corridors of the Savoy Theatre.