Broadway Opening Night Reviews

"Legally Blonde"
Laura Bell Bundy is a quadruple threat, singing, acting, dancing and looking fabulous all at the same time. She injects loads of personality, impressively evoking Reese Witherspoon's sweet-natured perkiness while adding some lovely grace notes of her own.

Legally Blonde - Variety.com
Of course the most crucial cast element is Elle, and Bundy could hardly be more winning. Decked out in signature pink, she adheres to the mold created by Witherspoon yet makes the role her own with a force-of-nature confidence that's never brash, offsetting Elle's can-do entitlement with touching vulnerability and a genuine warmth that cements her connection to even the skeptics in her radiant orbit. It's perhaps significant that Bundy's first Broadway gig was as the original Amber in "Hairspray," the show "Legally Blonde" most wants to emulate.

Legally Blonde - TheaterMania.com
Following in the hit footsteps of Hairspray and Wicked comes Legally Blonde, a boisterous adaptation of the smart and saucy Reese Witherspoon chick-flick. The show, which marks the directing debut of veteran choreographer Jerry Mitchell, is as meticulously groomed as its level-headed-despite-being-blonde protagonist, Elle Woods, played just about perfectly by Laura Bell Bundy (who starred in both Hairspray and Wicked).

Great White Way goes blonde - The Philadelphia Enquirer
It bends. It snaps. Its leading bubblehead, magnetically unleashed onstage by super-looker Laura Bell Bundy, is the sort of girl you have to root for...  The shining star in this universe is Bundy - also an alum of Hairspray, in which she created the role of the nasty Amber in that show's love triangle. She's curvaceous, easy with a song, and zesty in a dance. Forget the show's obvious flaw: In Act 1 Elle's head is all helium and in Act 2, she's suddenly much more anchored to Earth. In both cases, Bundy's performance soars, a great big blonde joke that pays off over and over.

'Legally Blonde' is, like, so totally on its way here - Cleveland.com
Laura Bell Bundy does the improbable by blotting out all memory of Witherspoon as Elle Woods.

Candy Worship in the Temple of the Prom Queen - New York Times
“Legally Blonde,” the musical, has Laura Bell Bundy, the kind of young woman who summons instant parental pride in the middle-aged. In addition to her prom-queen prettiness, she sings and dances flawlessly, and she delivers silly lines as if she meant them.

'Legally Blonde: The Musical' Works Hard to Please - Bloomberg
Since so much depends on Elle, let me say that Laura Bell Bundy has the great though unearned advantage of not being Reese Witherspoon, who played her on film. Bundy has rather more charm and at least marginally better looks, and sings and dances creditably.

Bubble-gum pop splashed in pink - Laura Bell Bundy stars in "Legally Blonde: The Musical," Palace Theatre's adaptation of the 2001 film. - Newsday
...she and the musical are peppy and bright and, though not a smidge more shocking than its heroine's special shade of pink, the show is what Elle's sorority pals might also describe as, "Like senior year but funner."

To Harvard Law, in pursuit of her boyfriend - NorthJersey.com
Bundy – who played the nasty Amber Von Tussle in "Hairspray" – is a skillful young actress who makes this fairy tale credible.
She looks good and sings well, but, just as important, she suggests that Elle, underneath her shallowness, is a bright, competent woman. Her emergence as a legal whiz might be unlikely, but, at least in the semi-cartoon circumstances, not unbelievable.
Bundy, who began her career with a splash at age 10 as star of the off-Broadway musical spoof "Ruthless," provides a warm, solid center for the story. She's an accomplished comedian, able to exaggerate Elle's foibles for comic effect while still keeping the character real.

Call this 'Legally Bland' - NY Daily News
Bundy, an appealing and talented actress, gets the chance to act (check out the tears in her eyes) and show off her pipes - and to step out of Witherspoon's shadow.

Broadway's ‘Blonde' Bombshell - The New York Sun
The movie wouldn't have worked without Reese Witherspoon's blend of gumption and naïveté, and Ms. Bundy fills her pink Manolos admirably. Ms. Bundy was Kristin Chenoweth's standby in "Wicked," and if she doesn't quite have Ms. Chenoweth's rafters-rattling vocal gifts, she gives Elle a far more plausible grounding in reality. She never backs away from or apologizes for Elle's allure, but her refusal to be defined by it scuttles any impulse to join the Harvard snobs in dismissing her. It's a sparkling performance, the sort whose strengths may become clearer only in Ms. Bundy's absence.

'legally blonde' - St. Louis Post Dispatch
You have an effervescent star, Laura Bell Bundy, belting out clever tunes about a Malibu cutie who takes on Harvard Law and wins...
Casting a leading lady — Laura Bell Bundy, Mitchell's "Hairspray" villainesse Amber — gave the show its compass.

'Legally Blonde' in the Pink on Broadway (scroll down) - Fox News
That is because the stars, especially Laura Bell Bundy and Christian Borle, are so enthusiastic and working so hard that you cannot deny their infectious good time... What the show does do, however, is make a star of Laura Bell Bundy.

WHITHER 'SPOON? - New York Post
It does have Laura Bell Bundy, who's pretty damn good... the effervescent and radiant Bundy

San Francisco Opening Night Reviews

BLONDED BY DELIGHT - New York Post
"Legally Blonde" stars Laura Bell Bundy in the role made famous in the movie by Reese Witherspoon.  It must have been daunting to follow in Witherspoon's footsteps. Her performance in the film was compared to Judy Holliday's in "Born Yesterday."  But Bundy, who's played Glinda in "Wicked," has pulled it off, and could emerge as the closest thing that "Grey Gardens" star Christine Ebersole has in the way of Tony competition.

Not only can Elle get into Harvard, turns out she can sing and dance too - San Francisco Chronicle
Elle Woods has leapt from the screen to the stage in living pink and blond. She's pretty, perky and a tuneful dynamo of delight, as played by an ever-engaging Laura Bell Bundy.

Merry musical 'Legally Blonde' dazzles and delights - The Oakland Tribune
there are pleasures like Bundy's cute-as-a-button Elle

PLAYBILL.COM’S THEATRE WEEK IN REVIEW, Feb. 3-9: Blonde Has More Fun - Playbill.com
This is good news indeed... and even better news for Laura Bell Bundy in her debut star outing;

'Legally Blond, the Musical' is Well-done Froth and Fun - Gilroy Dispatch
Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods handles the Reese Whitherspoon (from the 2001 nonmusical movie) role with a pair of pipes that levitates the front row audience out of its seats... She is adorable, loveable and starts out completely vapid and ends up as the valedictorian (lawyer) of her graduating Harvard class. Getting there is more than half the fun even if it's as far-fetched as a plot can get. I can guarantee you will enjoy the journey.

LEGALLY BLONDE - Omigod You Guys!!! - San Francisco Sentinel
Laura Bell Bundy is an A-#1 Classic Bombshell!  So in the pink as the brightest shapeliest ditz outta Delta Nu (Malibu), Laura Bell Bundy is to "Elle Woods" what Judy Holliday is to "Ella Peterson" of Bells Are Ringing - THE BEST.  With her stop-dead-traffic figure, a peel-the-wallpaper C# Broadway Belt, cues from the Dallas Cheerleaders and blown into the pinkest bubblegum musical ever you guys -!!!- Laura Bell Bundy will so "bend and snap" herself into Broadway Immortality...  Move over, you millions of triple threats - 'cause genius blonde Laura Bell Bundy is 5-Star DYN-O-MITE!  She acts / she sings / she dances / she's flawless in High Definition / she could flesh-out a 3-page centerfold.  Even better, she enters your heart.  Laura Bell Bundy is so, like, omigod you guys!

S.F. musical 'Blonde' is mane attraction - Contra Cost Times
a breathtakingly talented Laura Bell Bundy

Legally Blonde - Variety
Bundy may not have Witherspoon's radiant warmth (who does?), but she engagingly makes the role her own even as she delivers a faithful reproduction of its originator's (nonsinging) character voice.