|
June 25, 2010
A fine, fun collection of nuts
There just aren’t enough words of praise for Spelling Bee.
BAILA LAZARUS
Every time I sat down to write this review of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, my thought was, Where do I start with this hilarious bunch of nuts?
Do I focus on the singing, which ranged from really good to amazing? Do I repeat the jokes – sometimes groaners, but mostly hilarious zingers that spurred laugh after laugh? Or do I talk about the characters who were deliciously odd but also vulnerably human?
OK, I’ll start with the nuts themselves. You have Douglas Panch, the vice-principal, who has some hidden (and not so hidden) issues but says, “As to the incident five years ago, I’m in a much better place now.”
Rona, the moderator, who won the third Putnam bee by spelling syzygy, seems to be reliving that glorious moment through all the participants. Her warped sense of justice causes her to sing, “When last year’s winner loses 1-2-3, that’s my favorite moment of the bee.”
There’s Mitch, a leather-jacketed, black-hoodied, jeans-wearing ex-con who’s doing community service at Putnam Valley Middle School as a comfort counselor.
As to the actual participants, you have Olive, sweet and insecure, whose mother is away at some ashram in India. A lonely girl, her only friend is a dictionary, which she likes to read because everything is in alphabetical order.
There’s Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, a member of the gay-straight club, she has two fathers who constantly argue about how to bring her up. Logainne has a lisp and always seems to have to spell the words that have the most s’s in them.
The overachiever in the group is Marcy, who speaks six languages, was in the national top-10 spelling bee, plays hockey and rugby – and classical music on several different instruments. She sleeps three hours a night and is not allowed to cry.
Leaf Coneybear is the West Coast/Gulf Island rep from a family of hippies. He gets nervous and talks too much at the microphone but can suddenly go into a trance and spell words perfectly. He always gets the words that are names of funny-sounding South American rodents.
Chip Tolentino is the previous year’s champion, who gets distracted by one of the female participants and suffers an unwelcome erection, which he sings about. And, by the way, I have generally not been entertained by people singing about erections, menopause or genitalia in musical comedies, but this song kept me in stitches.
Last, but not least, there’s William Barfée (whose name is constantly mispronounced by the vice-principal). Played to scrumptious silliness by the off-the-wall Josh Epstein, he reprises his comic ability that shone in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Producers and is the highlight of the presentation. William uses his “magic” left foot to spell words on the floor, often collapses due to a peanut allergy and needs a certain amount of elbow room to feel comfortable. William pulls out an inhaler and latex gloves and uses them both randomly throughout the night.
To add to this cast, and make the play somewhat impromptu, four members of the audience signed up before the show to be called on stage and participate as spellers. At the beginning, they get words like “cow” and “Chinese” to keep them in the game, but eventually are knocked out with words of six syllables.
As each participant gets up to the mic, they ask the judges to use the word in a sentence, giving the vice-principal opportunities for examples like: “Because she was an atheist, Suzie didn’t mind when other children told her to go to hell” or “After losing all her friends, Suzie joined a group of compulsive talkers called On and On and On Anon” or “Oh look, there’s a cow.”
I could go on and on and on myself when it comes to the humor but, suffice to say, you’ll be laughing throughout the play and I don’t want to forget about giving at least a short shout-out to the music. Aside from a few numbers (Epstein singing about his foot) that were too repetitive for my taste, the singing was fabulous. Olive (Tracy Neff) was particularly outstanding. This is a talented crew with the triple-threat of song, humor and performance. I never thought a spelling bee could be so entertaining.
Spelling Bee was conceived by Rebecca Feldman, is based on the book by Rachel Sheinkin and is directed by Michael Shamata. It’s at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage until July 31. Visit artsclub.com.
Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, painter and photographer. Her work can be seen at orchiddesigns.net.
^TOP
|
