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Tri-State Theater

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Wednesday, July 09, 2008

The Search For Elle - Part 6

Ah, the trials of an actress trying to break into Broadway. On this week's episode of Legally Blonde: The Musical: The Search for Elle, the five remaining actors (out of the original 10) once again faced three challenges.

For the first challenge, they went to a salon for a makeover, and that meant the two actors who were not already blonde had a change of color. Autumn lost her beautiful red hair, and Natalie went from brunette to blonde. I had to laugh when Bailey cried because they trimmed a tiny amount of her hair - not to be cruel, but as you can tell from my photo on the right there, don't be complaining about your bad haircut to me. ;-)

Anyway, from there the actors met and chatted with Laura Bell Bundy, who will soon be giving up the lead role in the musical. Then they had a photo shoot, with the one chosen as the best getting a date with Andy Karl, one of the actors from the musical.

The final challenge - and the most important one - was singing the "Legally Blonde" ballad, one of the most emotional songs from the show. It was a great chance for each actor to show her vocal and emotional range, and since we're down to five contestants, we got to see a healthy section of of each audition.

The judges seem to like Autumn a lot, and this audition shows why - her emotions poured out, and her voice was powerful. In fact, she was the only one who had an outstanding audition - the others seemed to struggle, and Rhiannon hit a bad note (though she quickly recovered).

The final decision came down to the three pictured above (as always, the photo is courtesy MTV) - Bailey, Rhiannon and Natalie.

It seems unfair that Natalie got cut right after becoming blonde, but I suspect her height was the real problem - she was the shortest of the group by several inches. That leaves us with four candidates. If I was a betting man, I'd say it'll come down to Bailey and Autumn - but given my track record for predicting these things, I'm probably way off. We'll see!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Bailey is too plastic, in appearance and performance. There's no depth. Rhiannon is really fun to watch, but this wasn't the first time she struggled vocally and this time it was really bad. I like Lauren. I think she is immensely talented. Emma was right though. These three are "little girls." They're too young. Autumn is my choice. I think she has the maturity and the vocal/acting chops to handle the role.

Chuck Minsker said...

Denise, I do think Bailey has "the look" for Elle, and a good voice, but I think her southern accent (which she's still struggling with) hurts her as much as her youth. Rhiannon is fun to watch, but I agree that she's the weakest vocally. I agree that Lauren is talented, but I do think that, again, her youth hurts her. I do think Autumn is the favorite at this point, and I wonder if they deliberately sent her to the "final judgment" twice just to give her more exposure to the viewers.

Evan Minsker said...

How do you do it?

Chuck Minsker said...

It's all about dedication, m'boy! And education.