The Thrill of Phylactery! The Agony of Elanguescence! A Spelling Bee? On Broadway? Pulchritudinous, Dude!
Written: Jul 14 '05 (Updated Jul 15 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Vivid, layered characterizations and an exuberant score by William Finn
Cons: The world isn't a Spelling Bee
The Bottom Line: In which the author still can't spell 'vacillate'.
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| plorentz's Full Review: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - Original ... |
Tractate.
T-R-A-C-T-A-T-E
Tractate.
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I have three spelling bee experiences.
Fifth Grade: I have easily won the opportunity to represent Mrs. Anderson's 5th Grade class. I knew I would win. I just knew it. After all, I was the smartest kid in the class, and everyone knew it, including me. And those who didn't know it soon found out. From me. Yes, that's me leaving the class when everyone else is starting math. That's because I've already worked ahead and finished the 5th Grade math book on my own, so Mrs. Anderson has sent me to the 6th Grade math class. Oh, look! I got another 100 on my state capitols quiz! And boy, I can't wait to show everyone when I win the all-school (well, not quite - it's only open to 5th through 8th Graders) spelling bee this afternoon.
Cut to later that afternoon. I'm sitting with my fellow academic elites in uncomfortable cafeteria chairs in front of an audience of our nauseated peers. I'm nervous, but oh-so-damned confident. I will win this thing. Oh yes, I will win this Spelling Bee. There are about 20 of us, and I'm about the 7th one in. So far, the words are super-easy - the first round should be a breeze. Brenda Wepking to my left has just successfully spelled "atlas". It's my turn. I rise to accept the challenge with all the solemnity of the President-elect on his inauguration day (I so rule).
Cherries
'Cherries'? You've got to be kidding.
Cherries.
C-H-E-R-R-I-S
Cherries.
ding
"I'm sorry Paul. The correct spelling is C-H-E-R-R-I-E-S. Cherries."
W-w-what? Of course I know the correct spelling! I just spelled it! This isn't fair! This isn't right! I can't be the first one to go! Nooooooooooo!
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Primogenial.
P-R-I-M-O-G-E-N-I-A-L
Primogenial.
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Now that Andrew Lloyd Webber and those miserable French guys have left the building, Broadway is once again safe for small-scale quirkiness, musicals that are more about stories and characters than wildly extravagant set-pieces, and generically button-pushing musical crescendoes. At least one hopes so, even amidst the recent deluge of unexciting Broadway revues of radio pop songs by Billy Joel and ABBA, Lieber and Stoller and Elvis (to say nothing of that Boy George show, and coming soon: a Yoko Ono sanctioned John Lennon musical! Please, no!).
Still, one has to be encouraged when one encounters a new musical like William Finn's spectacularly small-scale-quirky The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and its shouldn't-be-surprising-but-it-is success.
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Oocyte
O-O-C-Y-T-E
Oocyte?
That's correct.
Phew.
- - - - -
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee began with playwright Rebecca Feldman and a little improvisational comedy troupe called the Farm in New York, who had developed a show called C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E. When a more famous playwright - Wendy Wasserstein, to be exact - saw the play, she called up her famous playwright friend William Finn (who wrote all those wonderful Falsettoes musicals in the 80s, and was following up on the success of A New Brain, a semi-autobiographical play about a songwriter's recovery from a massive stroke) suggesting that the concept would make for a great musical. When Finn saw the show, he agreed and proceeded to develop the concept into a full-length play, enlisting the help of Rachel Sheinkin to write the book, and later, director James Lapine (probably the best director on Broadway since Harold Prince's glory years), his frequent collaborator.
The play opened off-Broadway in February 2005, and through ecstatic word-of-mouth and critical excitement, it eventually transferred to Broadway three months later.
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Equipoise.
E-Q-U-I-P-P-O-I-S-E
Equipoise.
ding
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Eight Grade: Payback time. I don't even remember what the word was. Only that I spelled it right - that I was the only kid on that stage that day who spelled every one of the words asked of him right. In front of the whole damn school. I bet they're all sorry now for every jibe and nickname, sorry for calling me "Palsy" in gym class, and sneaking up and giving me titty-twisters (OUCH!) on the playground, sorry for making fun of me because Tanny was my girlfriend, sorry for calling the two of us together Kermit and Miss Piggy. Oh, yes, they were sorry all right! (Hey, I bet they'd have even spelled "all right" wrong!) Did I detect the tantalizing stench of jealousy rising above the heads of my fellow students, a collective murmur of apology, a rumbling earthquake of shame? Oh yes. Oooooh. Yes!
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Enucleation.
E-N-U-C-L-E-A-T-I-O-N
Enucleation.
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If Leo Tolstoy had been John Hughes, he might have said that all popular kids are alike, but every nerd is nerdy in his (or her) own way. And that's largely what The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is all about.
The show is literally a spelling bee, opening with a nervously hopeful flock of lisping junior high kids of varying degrees of social ineptitude, who carry their baggage - their insecurities, their hopes, their disappointments, their nasal congestions - conspicuously wherever they go.
There's Chip Tolentino, last year's Spelling Bee champ, and there's Marcy Park, preternatural overacheiver, fluent speaker of six (not five) languages (and she can say "hello" in at least seven more). There's Leaf Coneybear, the kid with the please-pay-attention-to-me look on his face, the one who thinks he's not smart, because he's home-schooled and that's what all of his brothers and sisters (and parents) say; and fastidious-to-a-fault Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre whose two dads are counting on her to be a winner.
And there's Olive Ostrovsky, who, despite having saved chairs for them, barely has parents to speak of, whose best friend and caretaker has always been her parents' oversized dictionary ("which I read as a girl on the toi... let"). And then there's the saddest case of all: one William Barfee (pronounced "bar-FAY", if you please), a kid so hateful and hated that he has no idea how to deal with someone who's actually nice to him.
Presiding over the Bee and all its little (but not really little) dramas, many of which are wholly internal, is Rona Lisa Peretti, a former Spelling Bee champ herself, who walks us through the various rituals of the bee, pointing out the various methods the kids use to advance in the competition, reliving her own special Spelling Bee memories along the way.
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Polyphony.
P-O-L-Y-P-H-O-N-Y
Polyphony.
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With an exuberant score that recalls Sondheim at his most playful, Finn (who also wrote the lyrics) conveys all sorts of layers of naked, adolescent emotion (not to be confused with "naked adolescent emotion", which is a totally different thing). "Pandemonium" is an eruption of fury, as the kids react to other kids getting all the "easy" words ("I knew that word, GOD-DAMN-IT!" they all sing in perfect harmony). There's an earnest desire for social order and personal acceptance, and there's hormones all over the place.
When anyone is eliminated, the kids break out in an extended chorus of good-byes that's one part unholy glee and one part there-but-for-the-Grace-of-G-O-D-go-I terror. And in this ensemble cast, each of the adult-as-kids performances feels like a stand-out. But standing out among these stand-outs are Celia Keenan-Boger as Olive, and Dan Fogler who voices Barfee as a mucus-coated stew of Eric Cartman, John Turturro (think Quiz Show), and Fozzie Bear.
As geekily caricatured as they may seem, each of the kids have their own moment in the spotlight and each comes to some sort of empowering epiphany while there. To Finn's credit, he's able to deftly and convincingly sail this show between inspired silliness, and honest-to-God, gutwrenching preteen drama. When Olive asks the meaning of the word "chimerical", the definition inspires a vivid vision ("The I Love You Song") of all the things she wishes for from her parents, and then she flatly rejects them - the wishes and the parents:
"Chimerical. C-H-I-M-E-R-I-C-A-L. Highly unrealistic. Wildly fanciful."
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Vacillate.
V-A-C-I-L-A-T-E
Vacilate?
ding
I'm sorry Paul. That is incorrect. If Robert can spell the next two words, he will have won. Robert...
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Sophomore Year: It was too easy this time. I didn't want it enough, or maybe I'd already proved something to myself. Here I stood, with the other last guy standing - Robert. Robert! Who'd have thought that Robert of all people knew how to spell? In a way, I'd been rooting for him all along without much knowing it, and I was happy he'd come so far. A part of me really didn't want to win; or maybe I was just inventing a part of me that really didn't want to win, now that I knew I wouldn't. Who knows?
After all I had learned that the kids still make fun of you even if you do win. Sometimes even more. The thing I'll remember most from this night, of standing up there with my hair flung over my forehead, deliberately arranged in a specific effort to look like John Linnell, attempting to sound out this word I'd never heard before - "vacillate" - what was that? - the thing I'll remember most is that giggle coming out of the audience every time I stepped up to the microphone and started spelling.
Going back to my spot in the line-up, I tried to inconspicously check my zipper. My mind raced with all the possible humiliations, my geek's paranoia bear-hugging me so that I could bearly breathe with all those snearing teen-aged eyes on me. V-A-C- giggle, giggle, giggle - I-L- what are you all laughing at goddammit??? - A- what am I doing? T- what's wrong with me, what's so goddamned funny about me? - E.
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Ebullience...
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The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is almost too good to be real, this grown-up super-dweeb's dweeby dweam come twue: A Spelling Bee! On Broadway! With music by William Finn! Where every lisping, asocial nerd (with nasal congestion) is heroic! And this Original Broadway Cast Recording of the play is everything an Original Broadway Cast Recording should be - that is, the next best thing to the real thing; a vividly realized (if strictly audio) portrait of the play, its characters, and its narrative, that could easily stand on its own as a delicious piece of music.
E-B-U-L-L-I-E-N-C-E
Ebullience.
That is correct.
And we have a winner!
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"
Original Broadway Cast Recording
Ghostlight / Razor & Tie Records
Released 5/24/05
Music & Lyrics by William Finn
Book by Rachel Sheinkin
Conceived by Rebecca Feldman
Produced by Joel Moss and Kurt Deutsch
49 min.
SONGS: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - The Spelling Rules / My Favorite Moment of the Bee 1 - My Friend, the Dictionary - The First Goodbye - Pandemonium - I'm Not That Smart - The Second Goodbye - Magic Foot - Pandemonium Reprise / My Favorite Moment of the Bee 2 - Why We Like Spelling - Prayer of the Comfort Counselor - My Unfortunate Erection (Chip's Lament) - Woe is Me - I'm Not That Smart (Reprise) - I Speak Six Languages - The I Love You Song - Woe is Me (Reprise) - My Favorite Moment of the Bee 3 / Second - Finale - Last Goodbye
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PRINCIPAL CAST:
Derrick Baskin (Mitch Mahoney, the Comfort Counselor)
Deborah S. Craig (Marcy Park)
Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Leaf Coneybear)
Dan Fogler (William Barfee)
Lisa Howard (Rona Lisa Peretti)
Celia Keenen-Bolger (Olive Ostrovsky)
Jose Llana (Chip Tolentino)
Jay Reiss (Vice Principal Panch)
Sarah Saltzberg (Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre)
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2005 TONY AWARDS:
Best Book of a Musical: Rachel Sheinkin
Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical: Dan Fogler
Recommended:
Yes
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plorentz
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Member: Paul Lorentz
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