Review: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Zach Theatre
by Michael Meigs
This show is a charmer. It has the zing of a small scale musical, the familiarity of all those school auditoriums you endured while growing up, the uncertainties of a tournament, the highs of competition, the quips and laughs of improv comedy, and -- unexpectedly -- a second act that resonates with drama and tenderness.
Michael Raiford's set is bright, functional and simple, using the Kleberg Stage's thrust stage as a "cafetorium" in an anonymous middle school in the equally anonymous Putnam County. The unobtrusive recorded background music before the opening and at the interval dates back mostly to the 50's and 60's. Musicians for the show are tucked back in the center alcove and the stage is provided with the appropriately sparse furnishing of folding tables and folding chairs.
The lights don't go down when the show starts. Instead, Jill Blackwood as Rona Lisa Peretti strides around with her impossibly angelic smile and authoritatively friendly manner, speaking in turn to various sections of the audience. We are part of this spectacle. This is a spelling bee finale and we are the friends, family and supporters of a collection of six bright or simply lucky kids. They all have the smarts or at least the unusual mental wiring to be spelling whizzes.
Yes, in the first half of the show four or five audience members will be recruited as contestants to sit with the kids and spell against them. But don't worry -- they've volunteered for the job. You won't be pulled out of your seat and into the spotlight without your consent. Jill Blackwood gives a chirpy introduction each time a speller comes forward and the audience volunteers are subjected to some gentle razzing ("Bill is devoted to the concept that casual Fridays really should be casual!").
By the rules, as the spelling challenge is delivered, the participant may ask to receive a definition and then to hear the word used in a sentence. Explanations and examples from self-important Vice Principal Panche are comic and sometimes wildly absurd.
The competition moves forward with musical breaks (and outbreaks!), side scenes or flashbacks. The music is bouncy and fun. Dave Steakley directs and Adam Roberts choreographs the show in busy jumps and circles that in fact, real middle school kids could happily execute. (Check out the "Pandemonium" video from YouTube, below, just posted by Zach).
We get the gradual revelation that paunchy Vice Principal Douglas Panch (Les McGehee), running the competition, is hopelessly enamored with his co-host Rona Lisa Peretti (Blackwood, playing a former spelling champion, now a successful real estate agent). Big Bernard Davis assists them as a sort of bouncer -- playing ex-con on parole Mitch Mahoney, helping out as part of his community service.
The real delights are the kids. Though they're playing middle-schoolers, only the super-talented Eve Alonzo as the super-talented multilingual ninja Marcy Park appears anywhere close to that age. Austin actress Lucy Jennings is Olive, whose mother has been living in an ashram in India for six months and whose father hasn't shown up to the event, and Andrew Cannata from St. Ed's is Chip the earnest Boy Scout.
Each one is a collection of quirks. They come across initially as parodies of misfit success, but in the course of the show -- especially in the second half -- they develop a cheery camaraderie. The drama of the competition reveals their appealing humanity. You'll find yourself pulling for one or another, and mentally spelling those words ahead of them.
How are you at spelling, say, crepuscule or arriviste or Rona Lisa Pareti's historical winner syzygy? (No kidding, I remembered that one from the Scripps-Howard spelling bee list published by the Birmingham News decades and decades ago.)
The slightly risqué humor might merit a PG-13 if this were a movie, but frankly, it's just the sort of grinning adolescent naughtiness appropriate to the middle-schoolers the cast is portraying here. The show's humor is in the tradition of venerable vaudeville musical hall gags and double-entendres alluding to the fascinating unspeakables of growing up. An early adolescent will lap it up and a younger audience member will catch only the silliest of those bits. Your inner teenager will laugh at the absurdity of it.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee wow'd 'em when in opened in New York in 2005. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout's review of February 11 was headlined, "It's Spelled W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L" and after his opening paragraph, he wrote, "Let me pause for a minute so you can go out and buy tickets, because [composer William Finn and librettist Rachel Sheinkin] have blown the bull's-eye off the target."
The Zach's production is fun to attend and a carnival of goofy delights. You'll enjoy it.
And quick, without a second look: can you already define and spell Hasenpfeffer, astrobleme, or homunculus?
Review by Elizabeth Cobbe in the Austin Statesman, October 1
Unattributed review by AustinOnStage.com, September 22
Review by Clare Croft at the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, September 21
Review by Ryan E. Johnson on examiner.com, October 9
EXTRAS
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin
Zach Theatre
