It’s time once again for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and the six Putnam County area middle school contestants participating just want one thing: to win.
The area students are assembled to compete for a trip to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.
The premise of ‘Spelling Bee’ is rather simple. It’s a musical comedy disguised as a spelling bee.
The theatre audience is the spelling bee audience. We’re invited to join in the joys and tribulations of the kids in the competition, and it’s very difficult not to root for nearly every contestant.
There is a wide assortment of students participating. There’s returning champ Chip Tolentino (Brian Jones), who wants another chance at victory. He sings a chipper song about an erection and it’s downright cute.
That’s right. Cute.
The nerdy, fanny-pack-wearing William Barfee (Will Windsor Erwin) doesn’t want a repeat of last year’s takedown by a peanut allergy. Barfee (who insists that it’s pronounced Bar-FAY) has a magical foot which spells out the word on the floor in front of him.
Erwin brought down the house with his hilarious song about his magic foot.
Home-schooled, cape-wearing student Leaf Coneybear (Ryan Doncsecz) feels socially inept, yet the audience loves him. Doncsecz transforms himself into Logainne’s father directly in front of the audience, yet the character transformation is impeccable.
Meanwhile Olive Ostrovsky (Nina Elias) waits patiently for her father to make it to the spelling bee while her mother is in India. Ostrovsky looks very much like a small child sitting on the bleachers, feet turned in, wearing pink overalls.
Logainne SchwartzandGrubenierre (Kristen Stachina) has extreme anxiety from her two dads to be perfect while Marcy Park (Kate Pistone) is deemed “all business” and could easily be perfect, but doesn’t know if she wants to give in to her parents’ pressure.
The Bee is monitored by current top Putnam County realtor and 3rd Annual Spelling Bee winner Rona Lisa Peretti (Wendy Borst). Borst has a beautiful voice.
Peretti is aided by Vice-Principal Doug Panch (Gary Boyer), who informs the audience that he is in a “much better place now” then he was several years ago. He reminded me of the vice-principal from my grade school.
And if you’re eliminated from the spelling bee, Mitch Mahoney (Peter Sikalias) is there to hand out hugs and apple juice boxes.
The entire cast is extremely talented and simply perfect in their roles. The singing was impeccable, and the songs are catchy. (The man next to me was humming along to every song!) Sikalias surprises as a tough-guy who sings like an angel, or at the very least, a boy band member.
When he joins Borst and Elias as a mother, father, and child singing about their love, it’s a very tender moment.
I think what makes ‘Spelling Bee’ so likeable and funny is the audience’s ability to relate to the awkwardness of the age and the pure desire to just fit in.
The set brought me back to the pre-adolescent social anxiety of assemblies and pep rallies of my middle-school days (not that long ago, I may mention) complete with signs such as “No Bully Zone” and a rope ladder.
At one point Logainne made a comment about the misshaped auditorium, a teasing ad lib about the PA Playhouse diamond-shaped stage.
When you get to the theatre, they ask if you’d like to volunteer to participate in the Bee, and I thought it sounded fun--until I realized that I would have to spell. What if they gave me a simple word and I choked'
Four volunteers were randomly picked, including me. We were given numbers to wear around our necks and asked to sit on the bleachers on stage.
One by one we were called up to spell. My word was “gremial.” After asking for a definition (“a square or oblong cloth which a bishop should wear over his lap when seating on the throne”), asking for it to be used in a sentence, and then attempting to spell it “g-r-e-m-i-n-a-l,” I was the first eliminated. In my defense, I didn’t hear it properly. I was one of only four people in the audience to have a juice box at the end of the night, though.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs weekends through October 13 at the Pennsylvania Playhouse.
For more information, visit www.paplayhouse.org