SPELLING BEE Last Night - Mid-Show Fire Drill at New World Stages

[HaveAGoodShow]

Posted: 11/23/25 at 1:21pm

Last night at SPELLING BEE, about twenty minutes before the show was supposed to end, a fire alarm went off in the theatre. It actually happened during a moment in the show when a “school fire alarm” could have made sense, so at first no one thought it was real. After about a minute it stopped. Then another minute later, the voice of the stage manager came over the loudspeaker asking the actors to leave the stage and the audience to evacuate the theatre.

Everyone stayed calm and we filed outside, trying to piece together what had happened. The rumor floating around was that a trick involving fire over at AMAZE might have gone sideways. After roughly ten minutes, we were all told to return to our respective theatres.

In all my years of theatregoing, I’ve never experienced anything quite like that. Huge credit to the New World Stages staff. They were steady, friendly and genuinely appreciative of how orderly the audience was.

It took maybe ten minutes to refill the house and the cast jumped back in to finish the last fifteen or twenty minutes. When the show resumed, Lili Cooper, wonderful as Rona, got a big laugh by thanking everyone for participating in the school’s fire drill.

And for the record, the show itself is sheer perfection. The improv is razor sharp. The performances are stellar, especially Jasmine Amy Rogers as Olive, who is pitch perfect and heartbreaking. Oh, and Daniel Radcliffe happened to be one of the audience spellers.

Go see the show! It's better than I remembered and so much F-U-N!

 

[HaveAGoodShow]

Posted: 11/23/25 at 1:24pm

P.S. While I was watching the show, I was struck by how sharp Lili Cooper’s comedic timing is. Would she make a great Helen Sharp replacement in DEATH BECOMES HER?