Some may enter the theatre thinking that if spelling bees are hard enough to sit through, to make one a musical must be an act of audience cruelty worthy of M. Night Shyamalan. The Trinity College Drama Society (TCDS)’s production of the Tony Award-winning The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, however, proves that the concept can not only be dazzlingly funny, but can also serve as an insightful, if irreverent, portrait of academic competition.
Winner of the 2005 Tony for best book, Bee casts six quirky adolescents against each other in a spelling contest. Instead of devolving into cutesy schtick, the writers took the time to develop what at first seem like conventional character tropes into human, lovable characters. According to Hannah Lazare, who plays one of the key spellers, Olive Ostrovsky, “What sets my character and this musical apart is how identifiable the characters are, especially Olive, who’s the one you’re supposed to identify most with among all the other crazy characters.”
This musical could not be further from the TCDS’s production of Sondheim’s Into the Woods last spring. Unlike Sondheim’s work, Bee prefers not to dwell on the deeper recesses of human emotion and instead maintains a peppy optimism throughout. Though cute, Bee falters at times from lyrics that are to Sondheim what Olive Garden is to Italian cuisine. As the title song goes: “We’re living out our dreams, which is a very nice, very nice, very very very nice, very nice, very nice, very very very nice, very nice beginning.”
Despite this, the stellar cast and performances elevate Bee into a lovable, hilarious comedy that is definitely worth watching. Spelling B seems an underestimation of this production; it’s definitely an A.
