The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee presented by TheatreWorks is a rollicking look at a group of middle school misfits who are trying to navigate the treacherous waters of puberty and adult expectations with the ability to spell as their only tool.
For these kids, this is more than just a spelling bee. On the verge of becoming the adults they were meant to be, each triumph is seen as a validation of their worth, and each failure has all the impending sense of doom that only an over-dramatic young pre-teen could experience.
With a Tony Award-winning book by Rachel Sheinkin, and a fun musical score by William Finn, these characters and all their ambitious little quirks are hilariously brought to life, yet are so real that audiences can empathize with their need for approval, and root for these children to triumph over the various adversities that keep them “just this side of normal."
It is not easy for adults to play young teenagers, and the danger for all of the cast members is to avoid concentrating so much on their peculiarities that they evolve into two-dimensional caricatures. However, the cast of this production does a superb job of fleshing out the lovable idiosyncrasies of this motley crew of spellers. The cast includes Catherine J. Crocetto as the painfully shy Olive Ostrovsky, whose mother has abandoned her to join an ashram in India, and whose father is too busy and angry to care about his daughter; David Anctil as William Barfée, the sinus-challenged former finalist with a unique spelling technique; Vicki Sosbe as Logainne Schwarzandgrubenierre, a politically aware speller with two gay dads and a lisp; Billy Dempster as Leaf Coneybear, the second runner up to the bee who is constantly told by his family that he is “not that smart “; and Tony Saracino as Chip Tolentino, a boy scout at the mercy of his unfortunately timed hormones, and Jaclyn Blythe as Marcy Park, a classic Type-A personality who learns that it is ok not to be the best at everything.
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