Theater Review—

‘Spelling Bee’ Is Full Of Great Talent: There Isn’t A Weak Link In The Cast

By Julie Stern

NEW MILFORD — Nearly thirty years ago we took our sons (at that time middle and elementary school students) to Long Wharf to see a screwball comedy called The Carmone Bros. Italian Food Products Corp’s Annual Pasta Pageant. The look of disbelieving joy on their faces when they realized what they were seeing on stage is something I will never forget. (Even now when my son wants  to make a point about kids discovering adult humor, he refers back to that Saturday afternoon.)

Last weekend we had the happy fortune to take my friend’s kids of similar age up to New Milford to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and as I watched their open-mouthed delight,  it was déjà vu all over again.

The William Finn (March of the Falsettos)-Rachel Sheinkin musical is set in a scruffy public school gymnasium, decorated with homemade banners and inspirational posters, where an assortment of nerds have assembled for their big day. Representing their various public, private and parochial schools, they are competing for the opportunity for one of them to represent Putnam County at the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

This subject has been explored in several films, namely Wordplay and Spellbound, but those were straightforward documentaries, taking the competition very seriously, and focusing on real children. Here the contestants are played by adults dressed as kids, each one geekier than the next,  presided over by Priscilla Squiers as Rona Lisa Peretti, a perky “Realtor of the Year,” along with Michael Wright as  Vice Principal Douglas Panch (whose unrequited lust for Ms Peretti drove him to a leave of absence) and the frighteningly thuggish looking  Jerrial T. Young as Mitch Mahoney,  who is fulfilling his Community Service sentence by acting as Comfort Counselor to the spellers who are eliminated.

Through the course of 19 musical numbers and an assortment of words, the kids begin to emerge as distinct personalities, each with their own set of issues. Billy Demster is Leaf Coneybear, the most feckless member of a large family of home-schooled hippies with interesting names (like his sister, Landscape). Leaf  makes his own clothes and looks like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Laura Ashley. He has only been invited to the Bee because the rightful winners from his group have to go to a Bat Mitzvah and is nearly undone by his anxiety and ADHD.

Vicki Sosbe is Logainne Schwarzandgrubenierre,  a severe maiden with stiff flaxen braids who has been raised by her two daddies to be a winner at all costs, even though she is a girl.

Jaclyn Blythe, a young woman of considerable gymnastic skills, is Marcy Park, representing Our Mother of Intermittent Sorrows  Parochial School. A transfer from Virginia who has previously held national ranking as a speller, Marcy expects to win, and intends to take no prisoners on the way.

Tony Saracino is Chip Tolentino, who won the previous year by default (when William Barfee was forced to retire for medical reasons). Dressed in his Boy Scout uniform, the over eager Chip gets distracted by a girl in the audience, leading to pocket pencil jokes about why he is afraid to stand up. When the ensuing confusion gets him disqualified, Saracino reappears in several roles including a candy butcher and Jesus Christ (answering Marcy’s prayer).

Finally, in the (somewhat) more serious thread, David Ancil as the supremely unattractive William Barfee,  and Catherine J. Crocetto, as  the drab and neglected Olive Ostrovsky, whose father is too busy to make it to the event (although she saved him a seat) and whose mother has gone off to an Ashram in India (where she bathes in the Ganges several times a day), begin to make tentative overtures toward each other. These two loners, who have always used dictionaries as a substitute for relationships, are developing untapped and unexpected empathy for their fellow misfits.

In fact,  growth takes place in most of the contestants: After Jesus tells Marcy that He doesn’t really care much about spelling bees, she realizes that she doesn’t need to win all the time. Leaf concludes that it was fun, and that even if he lost, he wasn’t as dumb as his family thought. And Logainne rebels against her fathers’ plan to sabotage the competition through dirty tricks.

But the best thing about this show is the talent of the entire company, the rollicking high spirits of numbers like Pandemonium  (which is exactly what it sounds like) and the rich power of their marvelous singing voices. Beth Bonnabeau’s direction, Dan Koch’s musical direction and Regina Sweeney’s choreography all make the most of the small stage so that it is bursting with humor and spirit and total goofiness.

My personal favorite is probably Jerrial T. Young as the surly Mitch Mahoney. When he gave the audience a thousand yard stare and ordered them to stand up for the Pledge, we shuffled to our feet with nervous alacrity. But there isn’t a weak link in the cast. They were all hugely talented and working together with energy and spirit, having as much fun as my young friends  sitting next to us.

You can take your kids to this one, and you’ll both enjoy it.

(Performances continue Friday and Saturday evenings, and Sunday afternoons, until March 27. Contact TheatreWorks for the details at 860-350-6863 or TheatreWorks.us.)