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With all due respect to the likes of Hadestown, maybe Happy Ending and Ragtime, I'm not entirely convinced that the most emotionally impactful musical currently running in New York City isn't an Off Broadway comedy about a group of aggressively awkward tweens attempting to become their county's top orthographer. Which is a noun with Greek roots through Latin and French influences, meaning one skilled in spelling. Welcome to Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Tammanini, and today I am reviewing the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, now running Off Broadway at New World Stages. It is, of course, no surprise that a show featuring a score by William Finn packs an emotional punch. But unlike falsetto's A New Brain or elegies, Spelling Bee keeps its heart a bit more hidden, buried beneath layers of quirky, offbeat, humorous. The current Off Broadway revival, directed and choreographed by Danny Mefford, doesn't deviate much, if at all, from the formula that made the original production a hit on and off Broadway over 20 years ago and has gone on to become a staple in community, regional and academic theater companies around the country ever since. However, perhaps because I was seeing it again for the first time in years, the show's quiet ache hit me even harder than it ever had before. The show's book by Rachel Scheinken chronicles a group of socially awkward, intellectually intense kids who dream of becoming the 25th champion of the Putnam County Spelling Bee. And it is just as insightful and funny as it was in 2004. The kids all approach the competition with absolute seriousness, but as words are spelled and misspelled, each contestant is presented with challenges beyond those of the linguistic variety. This is a show about lonely kids trying to figure out who they are, who they want to be, and how to achieve some sort of agency in lives that are otherwise dictated by parents, peer pressure and expectations. But the brilliance of Spelling Bee, and what makes it both endearing and affecting, is that while these kids are exceptionally strange, and while that strangeness is mined for full body laughs. The kids themselves are never treated as punchlines. The show laughs with them, around them, and sometimes because of them, but it never laughs at or looks down on them. These characters are experiencing real pain, loneliness, parental pressure, insecurity, abandonment, impossible expectations, and the terrifying realization that excellence is not the same thing as happiness. They are dealing with outsized emotions, and perhaps because of their outsized adolescent intelligence, they often process those emotions with far more clarity than most adults ever do. That is another reason why this production moved me. Winning the bee would represent a different type of personal victory for each speller, but none of them let the competition overwhelm the camaraderie that develops amongst them. It is easy to imagine that nearly every one of the contestants is some sort of outcast outside of the bee, so to see them comfort, encourage and quietly root for each other, even inside a competition designed to eliminate them one by one becomes genuinely beautiful. They are rivals, but they are also, perhaps for the first time in a room full of people who speak the same dialect of peculiarity as they do. The best productions of spelling bee work because they make space for the show to be infinitely silly without ever rendering it as slightly they allow the jokes to have room to breathe and land, but they also trust that the same quirks that make the characters funny are also what make their pain palpable. Childhood weirdness in real life and in spelling bee is rarely weirdness for weirdness sake. It is an armor, a way for kids to process oversized emotions and disappointments they otherwise don't have the capacity to address. Now don't get me wrong, this spelling bee is just as full of silliness and whimsy as ever before. Jason Kravitz gets plenty of mileage out of Vice Principal Douglas Panch's bone dried line readings, but one of the great pleasures of this production comes from watching the contestants simply exist in Teresa L. Williams perfectly rendered Gemmatorium set. Much like watching the Jellicle Cats prowl and preen in the original version of Cats. Part of the pleasure here comes from watching the spellers when they are not the center of attention. Each young actor is impressively present, reacting to everything large and small with a type of childlike wonder and oddball excitement that is hilarious without ever pulling focus. The cast's strength, perhaps because they are all relatively young actors themselves, is that they understand how to play children without putting ironic quotation marks around everything they say or do. Justin Cooley brings a lovely sincerity to all of Leaf Coney Bear's tics and trances. The role sits in a similar lane to his Tony nominated turn as Seth Whedis and Kimberly Akimbo. But Cooley again proves how difficult that kind of guileless eccentricity is to play without turning it into schtick. Here he dials the kookiness up a dozen or so degrees while still making Leif believable as a real life kid you could see running around the playground in a helmet and cape. Liana Rae Concepcion's Marcy park is tough and precise, making her eventual break from perfection all the more satisfying as Logan Schwartz and Grubiner Autumn Best is tightly wound, anxious and earnest, making her frazzled exasperation even funnier. Unfortunately, while Glee star Kevin McHale is certainly game as William Barfay, he is the one performer who feels like he is putting on his character's youthful weirdness. In fairness to him, he is 37 years old, actually older than Lilli Cooper, who plays former champion and current moderator Ronalisa Peretti. And Barfay might be the role that requires the greatest suspension of disbelief to accept his over the top antics, including his signature magic foot. Perhaps it is his lugubrious tone, but Mikhail's Barfay reads far closer to middle age than middle school school. Cooper, for her part, is as charming and comedically assured as ever, but her voice doesn't always fit the soprano demands of the role. Rona's biggest musical moments require a crystal clear upper register, and while Cooper gets there, her more belty background leaves some of the characters climactic flourishes missing the mark. Nonetheless, the production's emotional center and most captivating performance comes from Jasmine Amy Rogers. Sandwiched in between and around her Tony nominated turn in Boop and her acclaimed stint in Encore's the Wild Party, Rogers has shown New York audiences a remarkable range in an incredibly short amount of time. Now, as Olive Ostrovsky, she reveals yet another shade of her talents. Her Olive is wounded and weird, never letting her eccentricities overwhelm her loneliness or vice versa. It was something of a silent masterclass to watch her sit on the bleachers and react as she was happy for and discouraged by other spellers getting words right or talking about their parents. She was able to carry so many contradictory emotions at the same time, while never once letting the depth of Olive's feelings obscure the fact that she is still unmistakably a child. Her rendition of the I Love youe Song, along with Cooper and Matt Manuel, reminds you why this is undoubtedly one of the most quietly devastating songs in contemporary musical theater. At this point it feels safe to say that if Rogers chooses to remain on stage, it it will not be long before she is considered one of the best in the business if she's not there already. The I Love youe song also serves as a reminder of just how extraordinary Finn's score is. Spelling Bee is of course exceptionally clever and delightfully goofy, and you can absolutely enjoy it on that level alone. But that would be missing how exquisitely complex and layered this score is. Every song is a nuanced blend of humor, invention and genius level composition. While this revival is not attempting to do anything revolutionary with the piece, it serves as a reminder that Spelling Bee has always been more moving than its premise suggests. It is silly and legitimately laugh out loud funny, yes, but underneath all of its prepubescent strangeness is a deeply humane musical about lonely kids finding, however briefly, a room where their weirdness makes sense and at least one hard earned truth about what type of person they want to be when they grow up. Only one will win the bee, but on this afternoon they all go home with a prize far more salutary, which is an adjective meaning beneficial in a morally, emotionally or spiritually restorative way. The current Off Broadway revival of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is currently playing at New World Stages and is on sale through September 6th. As always, we greatly appreciate your support of Broadway Radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio thank you for giving us your time and listening. This has been Matt Tamnini and I'll talk to you soon.
- [09:26]
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