The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is in performances through September 6 at New World Stages.
By Elazar Abrahams
In these dark times, a lot of theater reflects the world we live in. Weighty dramas that tackle a plethora of social issues, plays that lend representation to forgotten fragments of society. Those productions are necessary, and I often find shows like that powerful and cathartic. But sometimes the best nights are the opposite – joyful escapes that find you laughing hysterically in a room full of strangers.
If that’s what you’re looking for, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a must-see.
Now playing at New World Stages, the revival of the cult-favorite off-Broadway show is brisk, hilarious, relentlessly charming, and kind of amazing in how much heart it sneaks into a premise this silly. It’s a musical, technically, but it’s not really about the songs. The score by William Finn and the book by Rachel Sheinkin are serviceable, sure, but the real engine is character work and the silly tension of watching adults convincingly slip into the roles of middle schoolers competing for something that, in the grand scheme of life, is so unimportant. And yet to them, in this fluorescent-lit gym at this exact moment, it is the only thing that matters.
That’s at once the joke but also the tenderness of Spelling Bee. The show doesn’t mock these kids, it empathizes with and understands them in all their awkward acne glory.
One of the biggest reasons the show delights is the cast’s commitment. The night I attended, two of the biggest billed stars, Kevin McHale and Jasmine Amy Rogers, were out, and it genuinely did not matter. Their understudies were fantastic, and if there was no paper slip in the program connoting there were absences, you’d never be able to tell. The material is strong and the company is locked in.
And because Spelling Bee is so built around personality, each speller is made memorable. You find pieces of yourself in them, or you recognize people you know, or you immediately pick a favorite to root for. My favorite was the oddball Leaf, a character who could easily be reduced to just a punchline, but he isn’t.
The other thing that really makes this revival pop is how much of the comedy is unpredictable. A huge portion of the laughs, especially in the first half, relies on audience participation, where several audience members get called up to join the spelling bee as guest spellers. It means that no two performances are exactly the same, and it gives the cast opportunities to improvise and riff in ways that make the whole thing feel electric. The best moments often come from the way the performers react to whatever random energy the audience volunteers bring onstage.
It also helps that the runtime is brisk. This isn’t a three-hour night that asks you to invest in lore. It’s a tight, one-act experience with no intermission, which is perfect for a show like this. The jokes keep coming and the bits keep escalating in fun, surprising ways. It feels designed to leave you happy and send you back out into the city a little lighter than you came in.
Find tickets and more information HERE.
TV and City 