St Catherine's (otherwise known as Catz) is renowned as one of the most fun-loving colleges in Oxford. These days its buildings are infected with RAAC, and the whole place is populated with faintly depressing temporary structures. But does that stop the students having a good time? Omigod you guys, of course not. And as if to prove it, their staging of Legally Blonde froths, bubbles and ultimately boils over with pure joy.
Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin's 2007 musical based on the 2001 movie needs no introduction from me. It won every award going, and continues to spread the feelgood vibe with waves of revivals sweeping the country like a new, and particularly welcome, virus. Its story of a ditzy West Coast prom queen who conquers Harvard Law School is wish fulfilment dialled up to eleven. It's funny, toe-tappingly catchy, and disarmingly unpretentious.
But there are certain things you need if you're going to stage a full-on musical like this. You need performers who can really sing and dance, musicians who work as a professional unit, technical support that goes without a hitch, and a director who can hold it all together as well as having vision, in the words of Mr Schneebly, "up the butt".
Fortunately, this production has got the lot. Ruby Suss-Francksen knocks it out of the Uni Parks in the starring role of Elle. She can bend and snap with the best of them, and her singing, well, I was going to say it's off the scale, but that might give the wrong impression. It raises the roof. She flits through about twenty costume changes faster than a Formula One car having its tyres changed, and on top of all that she hits just the right balance of sincerity and camp that this show calls for.
Suss-Francksen may be the star of the show, but you could drop a toy puppy anywhere in this cast and land on an outstanding performance. Nicole Palka is outrageously funny as the hairdresser Paulette. Eleanor Bogie, yes sir, she can boogie, as Brooke the fitness instructor. The Greek Chorus of BFFs provide a constant surge of positive energy. Charlie Mullin plays four different roles but gets quite possibly the biggest cheer of the night as Nikos the pool guy who is either Gay Or European (and turns out to be both). And Aaron Gelkoff as dweeby nice guy Emmett is simply a pro (no, really, he IS a pro; before coming to Oxford he was in the West End productions of Les Miserables and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole). There is no weak point. If I had to grumble, I'd like to see the mics get turned up on cue, and some of the cabling on the floor is definitely borderline dangerous and needs to be properly secured. But these are snags, not faults.
The glue that holds it all together, through the masterful control of director Alexandra Hart, is the obvious fun they're all having. At one point I spotted some of the performers' shadows cast against the side wall while they were getting ready to go on. The music was playing and, rather than simply standing waiting, those shadows were dancing even off stage. That's a happy company, and the audience can sense it.
When Legally Blonde first hit Broadway eighteen years ago, some critics were a bit sniffy. They thought it was a celebration of superficiality, the victory of airheaded cheerleaders. There's no way, they reasoned, a girl who doesn't fit the Harvard profile could ever truly make a success of it.
But there is a special poignancy in staging this show in Oxford in 2025 - and I'm sure it is in the minds of director Hart and producer Sami Jalil. Now, more than ever before, Oxford University is focused on broadening access, on finding students who emphatically do NOT simply fulfil traditional notions of what an Oxford "type" is. Instead, what admissions teams are looking for is that key quality: potential. And potential can, and must, exist anywhere. The important question that underlies Legally Blonde, when it's performed by these people, in this place, at this time, is: will you recognise that potential? I hope the answer is "yes". In the meantime, get down to Catz, and have some fun.