Post a song that makes you happy.

So many people write off Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Heather Hach’s Legally Blonde as a musical. I admit I rolled my eyes when the show was announced and thought it would be a standard half-hearted movie-to-musical adaptation. But when I imported the cast recording into iTunes and listened to it for the first time, I was introduced to a stage show that improves upon its origins, a feeling that is not lessened when the book is added to the mix or when one sees the production itself. Legally Blonde is a smart new-age musical comedy, one that takes account of the some of the lessons learned by the development of the musical play as well as some of those about musical theatre proclaimed by Sondheim (particularly “content dictates form”). It’s a diva style musical comedy like Anything Goes or Mame and it holds its own against those shows. Is it a perfect show? No. But it is accomplished and delightful, so I refuse to reconcile it to the realm of “guilty pleasures”.

The song that makes me happy from this show is “So Much Better”, seen here in a promotional video for the London production of the show: