A stuttering, pre-pubescent boy stands in front of the microphone. Nervously, he wipes the gleaming sweat from his brow and takes a gulp of air.
“Mr. Coneybear, your word is ‘acouchi,’” barks the announcer.
“Acouchi?” the boy snickers bashfully. “In a spelling bee?”
The young speller pauses and, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, asks, “Can you use it in a sentence, please?”
The exchange is one of dozens of hilariously heartwarming yet surprisingly thought-provoking scenes that make up the Tony-Award-winning musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, playing until July 11 at PCPA’s Marian Theater in Santa Maria.
Set in the geographically ambiguous town of Putnam Valley—which actually sounds a lot like Santa Maria (one of the contestants rode the SMAT to the competition and swears to the audience “It’s really not as scary as it looks”)—Spelling Bee follows the trials and tribulations of six quirky adolescents as they vie for the title of top speller.
But be forewarned: This is not your mama’s spelling bee. While it might appear innocent and unassuming on the outside, Spelling Bee offers a combination of savvy one-liners and astute societal observations worthy of any brooding drama.
Upon entering the theater, audience members are immediately transported back to their grade-school days, thanks to the commendable efforts of the production’s scene designer Andrew Layton.
The set reveals every aspect of a junior high school gymnasium, right down to the super-shiny plywood floors and coveted sports pennants.
The lights go up and we meet the first of an endearing cast of characters, Ms. Rona Lisa Peretti (played to PTA mom perfection by Bree Murphy). Peretti won the Third Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for correctly spelling “syzygy.” (Yes, it is a word, and, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it can be defined as the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies—as with the sun, moon, and Earth during a solar or lunar eclipse—in a gravitational system.) Peretti now relives her heyday yearly as the bee moderator, along with Vice Principal Panch (Eric Bishop).
Next, we are introduced to six of the 10 contestants, each of whom won their district’s spelling competition, except for Leaf Coneybear (an exuberant Jeff Boyce), a second runner up who got into the bee because his district’s winner and first runner up both had to attend a Bat Mitzvah.
There’s Chip Tolentino (Michael Sky Moon), a Boy Scout from Troop 24601 (Les Mis fans, try not to giggle) who won last year’s bee; Olive Ostrovsky (Kiera O’Neil), a spelling bee newcomer with a self-conscious slouch and a heart of gold; and Marcy Park (Emilee Furmanski), a baton-twirling, multi-lingual perfectionist. Rounding out the happy hodgepodge are Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre (a feisty Lexy Fridell), who speaks with a lisp and extols the virtues of a woman’s right to choose and same-sex marriage; William Barfee (Brian Rickle)—it’s pronounced Bar-Fay—a pugnacious little boy with a peanut allergy and a “magic foot” he uses to spell words with; and, of course, Coneybear, a whimsical whippersnapper who sews his own clothes and spells words in a catatonic trance.
Accompanying the spelling six are four brave souls from the audience. Recruited by staff members prior to the show, the audience members must attempt to follow along with the actors’ well-rehearsed or sometimes off-the-cuff shtick. And every so often, they make solo appearances in front of the mic where they are asked to spell such humdingers as “Mexican” or “cow.”
When an audience member or cast member misspells a word, he or she is escorted offstage by Mitch Mahoney (a side-splitting Jay Donnell), a local parolee fulfilling his court-ordered community service as the bee “comfort counselor.”
As Mahoney, Donnell brings an added level of hilarity to the show, at one point dispensing tough-love “thugisms” and at another bursting into soulful ballads with the message: “Winning isn’t everything, and losing doesn’t necessarily make you a loser.”
Throughout the show, each of the characters shares his or her own significant message. These little idioms are what give the show its identity. From little Logainne we learn “America hates losers.” We must struggle with her as she tries to apply her sound sense of fairness to an unfair world, where kids tease her for having two fathers and “the best speller doesn’t always win.”
In “The I Love You Song,” we learn about the pains of family dysfunction. When asked to spell the word “chimerical,” Olive, whose mother has been staying at an ashram in India for the past several months, pleads with her to come home: “I think Dad is angry, Ma / And I do not know what to do,” sings a broken-hearted Olive, “I think he takes out on me / What he wants to take out on you.” Through the innocent eyes of a child, the audience is reminded of the mistakes we can make as parents, lovers, or friends, and the ways we can overlook other people’s pain for the sake of our own selfish needs.
But even with its sometimes heavy subject matter, Spelling Bee still manages to have fun. The Bee is at its best when all of the characters come together to dance and sing, and celebrate spelling and each other, like in one such scene when they explain why they love spelling: “The chaotic life of a 12-year-old is too hard / And you never know what’s coming next / But in spelling things have logic and line / And in spelling there’s a greater design.”
Life at any age can be chaotic and hard, especially in today’s ever-changing world. But with a show like Spelling Bee, audience members can escape it all for a couple of hours and experience pure J-O-Y.
Staff Writer Amy Asman wishes she had a magic foot. Send her advice and encouragement at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 2, 2009.