Alex Maenchen
Features Reporter, Special Sections Editor

Photo by Millie Schreibman

One can only attribute the reason Trevor Adams and Lee Borden ended up in blond wigs and pink dresses for the Legally Blonde promotional spot to the first rule of improv: say “yes.”

“I actually kind of think it might have been Lee and Trevor’s idea to be in drag,” Laura Bradley, Coordinator and Box Office Manager at Moss Performing Arts Center, said. “I think it was sort of a joke, like, ‘Oh, we should be in drag for Legally Blonde.’ So we said, ‘Yeah, you should.’”

CMU Theatre is promoting its first show of the new year, ‘Legally Blonde the Musical,’ with the third promo in a four-part series starring Adams and Borden.

Adams and Borden were initially hired to act in only one promotional commercial for ‘Schoolhouse Rock Live!’ in which they have a back-and-forth about how lame the songs from the show are, only to start belting out the lyrics in unison moments later.

“Initially it just seemed like a good idea to get a couple of alumni, and we thought that those two would be fun together,” Bradley said. “And then after we did that, it went well and we thought, ‘Well, why don’t we try to have them here for the whole year, so it’d be kind of a thing for everyone to see them every time?”

Adams and Borden were brought back for the ‘Hay Fever’ promo. This one was more conceptually inventive in the style of a black and white silent film with title cards indicating the inaudible dialogue. As if spurred to compensate visually, Borden and Adams played a bit of physical comedy in both gesture and their facial expressions.

“So little of the greatness of that is actually us. We just sort of made silly faces for a few minutes,” Adams said.

“The ‘Hay Fever’ one was really funny,” Bradley said. “I love that one.”

It only seems natural that Adams and Borden would want to raise the bar on the next one, though between them there is a hesitance to take responsibility for the inception of the drag concept.

“I think dressing in drag may have been Trevor’s idea, so we can blame him,” Borden said.

Even so, the two ended up rolling with it, and the result was something else. Borden appeared the least strange of the two, looking somehow dignified like he had donned drag before. Adams, however, wasn’t fooling anyone with his black sideburns sticking out from underneath the wig and his full-on stubble encroaching on the bejeweled necklace around his neck.

Bradley thought they looked great, though she knew a marketing hurdle could arise that may be difficult to clear if the Theatre Department is to follow through in producing and distributing the commercial.

“Obviously there’s no drag in the show, so that’s something we’re struggling with right now, to make that clear that Trevor and Lee are not actually in the show, in their dresses,” Bradley said. “The idea is that you hear some of the music from the show and you get a feeling for what the show is going to be like.”

As with the previous two commercials the duo have starred in, the ‘Legally Blonde the Musical’ promo will appear on local television stations like KKCO and Rocky Mountain PBS, as well as the Theatre Department’s YouTube channel.

With just one more promo shoot, Adams and Borden are just enjoying the ride.

“Any opportunity to be silly with Lee is great,” Adams said. “It’s so great, we just come in, act silly for a little bit, then leave. And then after a few weeks, we get to see this finished product. We didn’t have to do any of the editing or any of the technical stuff the videographer has to do, and it ends up looking so cool.”

Both imagine that these four commercials will be it for them, “unless the public demands our return,” Borden said in true dramatic fashion.

amaenche@mavs.coloradomesa.edu