Legally Blonde, Michael J. Fox Theatre, Burnaby, Feb. 3 - 17, preview: Feb. 2. Tickets: $27 - $39, School matinee (Feb. 9) and Family Day Matinee: $15. For more information and to reserve tickets visit alignentertainment.ca/tickets or phone: 778-888-8444.
End of Act One. The big number. The showstopper that’ll bring the audience to its feet when the curtain drops.
Julia Ullrich is belting out “So Much Better” like someone auditioning for the lead in Legally Blonde the musical – which is exactly what she’s doing.
Rhythm and lyrics are building to that one big, showstopping note, the high-C over high-heeled Jimmy Choos (in pink, of course).
“I am so much better than . . .”
Then she missed the note.
End of audition. A pink nightmare not seen since Ralphie’s bunny suit in A Christmas Story.
“I totally screwed it up,” Ullrich recalls with a laugh.
She left the room, her hopes of playing Elle Woods dissolving like a new perm in a hard rain.
Ullrich knew she could hit that note. She just didn’t know if the show’s casting directors would ever know she could hit that note.
But she got another audition.
“Yes please, I want another chance at it,” she remembers thinking.
She wanted the part, of course. But she really wanted to prove she could hit that note.
The song, about landing an internship at a law firm, began: “Seeing my name in black and white, it’s like making love with you all night. No, wait! It feels so much better . . .”
It was coming. That “really giant note that’s super hard to sing.”
“I am so much better than . . . before!”
She hit it.
Ullrich got the part. Driving from her day job to the Michael J. Fox theatre in Burnaby for tech rehearsal, the former Seycove Secondary student reflects on Elle Woods, the Cosmo-and-effect character made famous by Reese Witherspoon.
“She’s kind of in her own world,” Ullrich explains. “Everything is given to her, she’s totally beautiful and has this super hot boyfriend and all of the things that anyone could want.”
But when her world view is upset (the super hot boyfriend dumps his Marilyn in search of a Jackie,) Woods is steadfast; blonde to the roots of her soul.
She has an assumption of success, Ullrich says, describing Woods’ mindset as: “I’m going to get the thing that I want, I’m going to do whatever I have to do . . . no problem.”
The Legally Blonde movie was not exactly burdened with praise upon release, with New Yorker critic David Denby calling Witherspoon: “a brilliant corsage bobbing in junk-strewn waters.”
But there’s something about Woods’ refusal to be pushed from pink that resonates with viewers who routinely exhaust themselves with doubt.
“Sometimes we’re really good at talking ourselves out of things,” Ullrich says.
She speaks from experience, having once nearly talked herself out of a career in acting.
“I got a little bit conflicted towards the end of high school . . . ‘What should I do?’ ‘What’s the right thing?’”
She spent a year enrolled in science courses at UBC with her eye on a white coat and a stethoscope.
But it felt like a misstep, Ullrich says, explaining she wasn’t: “nearly as good at science as I thought I was.”
In an effort to take her mind off academics she’d also enrolled in a musical theatre class.
“I found a home there,” she recalls fondly.
Since then she’s battled Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady and endured the Diet Coke-heads of Heathers: The Musical.
Having just graduated from UBC with a bachelor’s degree in education, playing a fellow university student in Woods feels somewhat timely, she says.
The musical’s choreography borrows liberally from the Broadway production, according to Ullrich, who explains that you can’t stray too far from the “poppy, super-girly, cheerleaderesque thing.”
However, this show is distinct, boasting a “really stacked” cast, Ullrich says.
Ullrich offers effusive praise for her castmates but seems guarded when discussing herself.
Talking about her audition, Ullrich refrains from offering any theories about why she got the role.
“I actually have no idea,” she says with a laugh. “Hopefully I’m doing a good job!”
