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The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a one act musical comedy with music and lyrics by William Finn and a book by Rachel Sheinkin. The show centers around a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally-quirky grown-ups. The 2005 Broadway production, directed by James Lapine, has earned good reviews and box-office success and was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning two, including Best Book. The show has spawned various other productions in the U.S., a national tour with performances two in Canada and Australian productions. An unusual aspect of the show is that three or four real audience members are invited on stage to compete in the spelling bee alongside the six young characters. During the 2005 Tony Awards, former Presidential candidate Al Sharpton competed. Another amusing aspect of the show is that the official pronouncer, usually an improv comedian provides ridiculous usage-in-a-sentence examples when asked to use words in a sentence. For instance, for the word "palaestra," he says, "Euripides said, 'What happens at the palaestra stays at the palaestra.'"[1] At some shows, adult-only audiences (over age 16) are invited for "Parent-Teacher Conferences," also known as "adult night at the Bee." These performances are peppered with sexual references and profanity inspired by R-rated ad-libs made during rehearsals. Spelling Bee, together with The Drowsy Chaperone, Xanadu, [title of show] and others, is part of a Broadway trend to present musicals uninterrupted by an intermission, with a relatively small cast and short running time of less than two hours. The cast album was released on May 31st, 2005 and is available from Ghostlight Records, an imprint of Sh-K-Boom Records.
[edit] Background and original productionThe musical was based upon C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, an original improvisational play created by Rebecca Feldman and performed by The Farm, a New-York-based improvisational comedy troupe. Sarah Saltzberg, Wendy Wasserstein's weekend nanny, was in the original production, and Wasserstein recommended that Finn see the show. Finn brought Shenkin on board, and they worked together with Feldman to transform the improv show into a scripted full-length musical. Spelling Bee was workshopped and developed at the Barrington Stage Company (BSC) - Julianne Boyd, Artistic Director - in the Massachusetts Berkshires in two different stages. In February of 2004, a workshop was done in which a first act, and parts of a second act were created - this stage of the process was directed by Michael Barakiva and Feldman. The script was fleshed out and the show was given a fuller production in July 2004 directed by Feldman and Michael Unger. Dan Knechtges choreographed the workshop and summer productions and the Broadway production. Dana Harrel produced both productions as the Producer of Stage II at BSC. A few cast members, Dan Fogler, Jay Reiss, and Sarah Saltzberg remained from C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E. Robb Sapp (later replaced by Jose Llana when Sapp moved on to Wicked), Dashiell Eaves (replaced by Derrick Baskin), Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Celia Keenan-Bolger (joined as Olive Ostrovsky in the summer), Lisa Howard, and Deborah Craig were added to the cast, and a full script was created. The musical moved Off-Broadway to the Second Stage Theatre on January 11, 2005, where it enjoyed critical and box-office success. Spelling Bee moved to Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre on April 15, 2005. It closed on January 20, 2008 after 1,136 performances.[2] The director is James Lapine and the choreographer is Dan Knechtges. The show won Tony Awards for Best Book (Rachel Sheinkin) and Best Featured Actor (Dan Fogler). The original Broadway cast was as follows:
Notable replacements have included Barrett Foa and Stanley Bahorek as Leaf, Greta Lee as Marcy, Jenni Barber as Olive, Sara Inbar as Logainne, Jennifer Simard as Rona, Jessica-Snow Wilson as Olive, Aaron J. Albano as Chip, and Mo Rocca and Darrell Hammond as Mr. Panch. The first performance in-the-round was at the North Shore Music Theater in Beverly, Massachusetts. This performance was considered successful and the circular theater adds a new dimension to an already amusing musical. [edit] Characters
[edit] Subsequent productionsA Chicago production began performances on March 28, 2006 at the Drury Lane Theatre – Water Tower Place. The National Tour began in Baltimore, Maryland at the Hippodrome Theatre on September 19, 2006 and, as of June 2007, has visited over 30 cities across the U.S. There were two additional US sit-down productions in San Francisco and Boston. The San Francisco production opened on March 1, 2006 at the Post Street Theatre and closed on September 3, 2006. The Boston production opened at the Wilbur Theatre on September 26, 2006 and ran until December 31, 2006. The majority of the San Francisco cast opened in Boston. The first production outside the United States was at the Melbourne Theatre Company in Melbourne, Australia in January 2006. It starred Marina Prior as Ms. Peretti, David Campbell as Chip, and Magda Szubanski as William. The Melbourne Theatre Company production was presented by the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and again starred Prior and Szubanski, now joined by Lisa McCune as Olive. The production opened on June 11, 2007 and ran until August, 2007 after several extensions. From May 24 to June 17, 2007, the original Broadway cast reunited for a limited four-week run at the Wadsworth Theater in Los Angeles. [3] In 2007, the first translated production opened in Seoul, South Korea, with all of the music and dialogue in Korean, but the words that were spelled were in English. In September 2008, a German-language adaptation premiered as Der 25. Pattenser Buchstabierwettbewerb. [1] In October 2008, Oscar theatre company [2] In November 2008, Auckland Theatre Company [3] will stage the first professional production of the show in New Zealand. The 2008-2009 National tour premiered on 11 October 2008 at the Union Colony Civic Center in Greeley, CO, with an official opening in Fort Collins, CO on October 14th. In 2009, a production will arrive in the Philippines. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in Manila The Spelling Bee is returning to Barrington Stage Company, where it originated, this summer. It runs from June 15th-July 21st. This will be the first regional production in the United States. The production includes several cast members from the touring company and is a co-production with North Shore Theatre. [edit] Musical numbers(Songs are not listed in the Playbill since with audience members on stage, the timing of the "Goodbye" songs varies with each show.)
The original Broadway cast recording was nominated for a Grammy Award. [edit] Audience interaction and words used
About a half hour before the show begins, audience members in the lobby are given the chance to sign up to participate in the show as "spellers." The registration form asks for name, occupation, hobbies, description of clothing, spelling ability, and age range. Interviewers look for people with no acting experience, unique names, traits and backgrounds. For example, when a person named "Blayze O'Brien" was chosen as a participant, the characters made marijuana-related jokes when it was his turn to spell.[citation needed] The audience participants are taken backstage prior to the show and are shown where to stand when called from the audience and given instruction about what to do when called upon to spell. They are asked to request a definition of each word and its usage in a sentence, and to attempt to spell each word rather than giving up. During the performance, the actors sitting next to the audience participants periodically whisper hints about when to stand, sit, move in "slow motion," "freeze" or hang on because the seating platform unit is about to spin. Ms. Peretti calls the spellers to the stage at the beginning of the show, and they are given badges to wear that say "Finalist." As the show proceeds, each one is eliminated with successively more difficult words. The final audience participant to be eliminated is serenaded by Mitch ("Prayer of the Comfort Counselor") on-stage. Mitch also gives each eliminated finalist (both audience members and regular characters) a juice box and a hug. Katharine Close, the 2006 winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, was invited to be a contestant at a performance of the show. She was the last speller from the audience to be eliminated and survived 14 rounds.[4] In addition, the musical treats the audience members as if they were the audience at the fictitious spelling bee. For example, the characters single out audience members as their "family" members. For example, William periodically refers to an age-appropriate woman near the stage as "mom." Similarly, Chip is distracted by an attractive female audience member (or male in the adults-only version), contributing to a misspelling. The characters also frequently walk through the auditorium among the audience during the show, sometimes integrating the audience into the show and occasionally dropping the "fourth wall." [edit] Awards
Theatre World Awards
[edit] References[edit] External links
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