Singing and Spelling

Last week we had a rare night out and attended a production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the Paper Mill Playhouse.  We actually used a Groupon to get a good deal on tickets and we thought it would be a nice way to feel cultured.  Spelling bees have been somewhat fascinating for us and we found the documentary Spellbound to be equally dramatic and hilarious, so we had high hopes for this.

The Paper Mill Playhouse itself was a cute little place.  There are signs for it on the interstate, so we've always been curious about it.  It's apparently the state theater of New Jersey, which may not sound like much especially with New York City so close, but it had a cozy, intimate feel.  The The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a relatively short, one act musical, although they did include a short intermission.  One of the gimmicks is that for the first part of the production, select audience members are called up to actually participate in the spelling contest.  The cast uses this as an opportunity for some impromptu jokes, making up fictitious biographies of the new contestants and selecting outrageous words.  In fact, the entire first half was sharp comedy as the other contestant cast members are introduced, each with their weird little quirks and personality disorders.

However, the show began to fall a little flat after the good start.  After the intermission, the audience contestants had all been booted and the mood shifted from the comical to the dramatic.  I'm not sure the transition was handled that well---since the show is relatively short and there are quite a few contestants, you  never really get enough time to fully empathize with the troubles and hardships hiding behind each little quirk.  I think they were trying to split the difference, but difference in tone was a little jarring and the second half lacked the impact it deserved.  The moral of the story, as the ex-convict doing his community service as a "comfort counseler"  tries to tell the kids, there are more important things than spelling.

Still, it was a nice show and it was good to get out of the house and pretend to be real adults for once.  This production in particular was unique since one of the actresses is physically disabled and confined to a wheelchair.  The choreography had to be rewritten to accommodate her, but it was very smoothly done and we didn't even realize that her disability was not an aspect of the original character.  In fact, this made her story a little more poignant.

My wife is not the biggest fan of musicals, but I think we both enjoyed it.  The next production at the Paper Mill is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which is a classic that I loved as a Classics major (no pun intended).  I'll have to convince her to see it...

The cast at the Paper Mill Playhouse