Elle Woods Visits Her Alma Mater

“Some say that I’m a pompous creep / Somehow I don’t lose that much sleep / Why bother with false modesty? / Harvard’s the perfect place for me.”

Harvard alumni are often inspired by their undergraduate years, but perhaps none thus far have been able to express these experiences as well as “Legally Blonde: The Musical” co-composer and co-lyricist Laurence C. O’Keefe ’91. “At Harvard, I met high-powered, fascinating people who were utter dicks. I guess you can learn something from those dicks,” he said of the College’s impact on his work.

The creators and touring production cast members of “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” running at the Boston Opera House until Nov. 9, gathered for a panel discussion last Tuesday at the New College Theatre. Participants included O’Keefe, his wife Nell D. Benjamin ’93 (who co-wrote the music and lyrics for the show), cast member Paul Jackel ’78, and Becky Gulsvig, who plays the plucky, ambitious lead character, Elle Woods. More than just an opportunity to watch free excerpts from a hit musical, the panel inspired and encouraged current students who learned about Harvard’s influence on the careers of successful alumni in the performing arts.

“This was one of those crazy Harvard moments that would only happen here, where the resources just all came together and it’s with something that we’re truly interested in and excited about,” Davone J. Tines ’09 said.

Organized by the Office for the Arts’ Learning from Performers series, Broadway Across America-Boston, and The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the event provided a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a Broadway show. O’Keefe and Benjamin shared the process of approaching a new project and discussed how their Harvard experiences played into the musical’s score.

“I drew on the tone from Harvard, from the notion of being plunged into this sea of people far more qualified than me, just like Elle,” O’Keefe said. He jokingly added, “I also tried to recapture the exact ways Harvard Law School students sing and dance.”

Later, O’Keefe was more earnest about the College’s impact on his life and career. “Harvard doesn’t focus a vast amount on the ‘how’—it focuses on the ‘what.’ It’s hard to major in playing a violin or acting or something like that here,” he said. “Instead they want you to study the great works of literature and the great lessons of time. We’re all philosophy majors in a weird way, because we examine what it means to be a person, to make decisions for what is good. How should we treat each other? How will we help the world? That’s something that musicals are all about. They all, on some level, deal with communities.”

In the panel discussion—which was moderated by NCT production coordinator Dana Knox—Benjamin divulged that her experiences had a more direct impact on the show. “We’ve snuck in references to people we know. There are traces of people that I knew from Harvard,” she said. One such example is the last name of her freshman year roommate, which now serves as one of the names of a law firm in the show.

Another nod to the real Harvard are the names of the three admissions officers who accept Elle into Harvard Law—Pforzheimer, Lowell, and Winthrop.

The event also took on a lighter tone. Members of The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, dressed in drag as sorority sisters and Elle Woods, tested their Elle (David J. Andersson ’09) against Gulsvig in a series of challenges, including dog training and practice LSAT questions. After being presented with the impossible challenge to help a fellow sorority sister locate her true love, Gulsvig upstaged Andersson’s answer and revealed her natural wit by thinking on her feet: “Well, I’d just tell you to bend and snap, and he’d come to you!”

Before the cast performed two numbers from the show—“Blood in the Water” and “So Much Better,” the dynamic Act I finale—Gulsvig offered some final advice. “You just have to keep trying,” she said. “I just climbed my way up the ladder.”

“You can’t assume that you’re done with learning when you’re done with school,” O’Keefe echoed. “You should never stop making yourself better or working on yourself.” Elle Woods herself would undoubtedly approve.