The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Reviews- Page 3

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 9:45pm

Pacific Overtures BETTER WIN SOMETHING! or they'll have one angry little boy on their hands!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:15pm

Isherwood from the Times is a Rave (and a new rave, not a reprint of his Off-Broadway one):

"The happy news for this happy-making little show is that the move to larger quarters has dissipated none of its quirky charm.

In fact, the musical has managed to make lemonade from one of Broadway's most lemony spaces. The dreary basement lobby of the Circle in the Square always has, come to think of it, resembled the cinderblock nightmare of a prefab junior high slapped together in the 1960's. Plastering it with peppy posters promoting the French club, and plaques commemorating the mock achievements of the show's creative team, the set designer Beowulf Boritt invests an antiseptic space with cheesy warmth. (Little James Lapine, now a big-shot Broadway director, got the Dewey Decimal Award from the Putnam Librarians Association.) The theater itself, with its rows of steeply raked seats arrayed like bleachers on three sides, has been cleverly transformed into a mock gymnasium, with a basketball court stenciled on a scuffed wooden floor.

Like much else about this lovingly hand-stitched musical, the atmospheric décor should be cute to the point of cloying, but somehow it isn't. Likewise, the recruitment of audience volunteers of all ages to join in the competition still inspires delighted chuckles and palpable suspense, not squirms of irritation. At the reviewed performance, when the last surviving civilian, a shy-looking tyke with shaggy hair, skipped a syllable or two in his last word, the audience slumped and sighed in unison.

Most crucially, the affectionate performances of the six actors burdened with the daunting challenge of inhabiting young souls have not been stretched into grotesque shape by the move to a large theater. Space doesn't permit me to celebrate them individually, as I probably should. But focus on any one of these talented performers, anxiously looking on as a competitor faces down a polysyllabic curveball, and you'll see the twitchy behavior of a real youngster, not actors self-consciously aping youthful mannerisms. Lisa Howard and Jay Reiss, meanwhile, who play the perky but unbending administrators of the bee, are no less skilled at finding the honorable qualities in more mature geekdom.

William Finn's score sounds plumper and more rewarding than it did Off Broadway. If it occasionally suggests a Saturday morning television cartoon set to music by Stephen Sondheim, that's not inappropriate. And Mr. Finn's more wistful songs provide a nice sprinkling of sugar to complement the sass in Rachel Sheinkin's zinger-filled book. Ms. Sheinkin sets off a new comic firecracker every time a contestant furrows a brow and asks to hear a word used in a sentence, in accordance with the rigid bee rules: "Sally's mother told her it was her cystitis that made her special."

As befits a detail-oriented past master of the Dewey Decimal System, in refitting "Spelling Bee" for a larger theater, Mr. Lapine has sharpened all the musical's elements without betraying its appealing modesty. "Spelling Bee" is not extravagant in its aims, but it lives up to its goals in a way that the season's bigger, glitzier and more ambitious musicals mostly don't. Gold stars all around!"



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/theater/reviews/03putn.html

Updated On: 5/2/05 at 10:15 PM

[kidmanboy]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:23pm

I'm really glad that these reviews are also pointing out the intelligence and heart in the script and Finn's score and not just applauding its laughter. I can't wait to see the show again!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:46pm

The AP is a Rave:

"Yes, they still can spell strabismus, capybara and phylactery. Those nerdy, geeky kids competing in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" have made the transfer from off-Broadway to the Big Time -- Broadway -- with their funny, offbeat charm intact.

Indeed the musical, which reopened Monday at Circle in the Square, is better than ever, more heartfelt and overflowing with a generosity of spirit that tempers a tale in which the result has to be bittersweet: Someone wins and someone loses."

AP REVIEW

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:49pm

So can we say now that this is the best reviewed Broadway musical of the season?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:55pm

Newsday is a Rave. Winer writes the following and then reprints excerpts of her earlier rave for the Off-Broadway production:

"The sleeper hit musical of the Off-Broadway season has moved into the big time with all its off-beat charms intact - and then some. "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," which opened last night at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre, is not only the most original little-show-that-could since "Avenue Q." As a candid snapshot of the tyranny of winning, this big-hearted tiny musical might remind you of a younger, more adorable companion piece to "A Chorus Line."

Director James Lapine has polished and pumped up the production without losing any of the handmade honesty that made the spelling-bee spoof so endearing. At second hearing, William Finn's score is more complex than its raucous effortlessness suggests. The virtuosic cast members have expanded their heartfelt performances into this big, often difficult theater as if it had been waiting to be transformed into a school gymnasium for just such a county competition.

Here are excerpts from the Feb. 8 review of its Second Stage incarnation. Everything in the Broadway version is the same, only better."

Newsday Review

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:55pm

Just got back. This is an honest to goodness triumph for musical theater. It was amazing. I will post a review tomorrow.

[GovernorSlaton]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:58pm

Well, so much for backlash. Wheeee!

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 10:58pm

BTW- 'My Unfortunate Erection' was sung to Donna Murphy!!! :)

[GovernorSlaton]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:00pm

Oh...

OH. Right, right, that makes much more sense.

I misread that as "'My Unfortunate Erection' was sung BY Donna Murphy."

Gotcha.

Updated On: 5/2/05 at 11:00 PM

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:01pm

Haha, gov!

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:08pm

wr, i'm sooooo jealous of you! did you see bill?

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:11pm

Yup. Gavin Creel and Bernadette Peters were also in attendance. They loved the show, or so they told me .

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:16pm

who else did you get to see/talk to?

[Plum]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:16pm

Oh, these reviews made my night. Joy!

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:21pm

plum, how exciting that you and i agree on a show!

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:22pm

I saw basically all the people involved with the show (David Stone, Rachel Sheinkin, William Finn, James Lapine)
But besides that, I saw someone I knew Ive seen before but I couldnt/cant figure out who it was and its driving me nuts.
I saw Bernadette, Gavin, Donna, and thats about it. I know there were more celibrities there, though. It was a truly phenomenal show.

Also: why is the Times review not by Brantley? I was anxious to see if this would be his rave of the season. Cant wait for Clive's notice.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:24pm

magruder said that the times usually lets their critics follow through with a show if it transfers, and isherwood reviewed it off-broadway, so he stayed with it.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:30pm

I am pissed! I wanted to see what Brantley would say about it. Ugh! Well, I'll settle for old Clive. Where's his review, anyway?

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:32pm

YESSS!!!!!!!!!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:39pm

And to be fair, Brantley raves for more than a dozen shows every season -- this season Doubt, Twelve Angry Men, Hurlyburly, On Golden Pond, A Number, Shockheaded Peter, Virginia Woolf, The Pillowman, Glengarry Glen Ross, Spamalot and four or five others all received raves from Brantley.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:41pm

Looking back on it, that is true Margo. Did Brantley really rave about Spamalot, though? How bout DRS?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:51pm

He was mixed on DRS ("the show just doesn't have the self-belief, not to mention the oomph, that can make vulgarity a fine art"), but of Spamalot, if he didn't quite rave, he described it as a "a resplendently silly new musical" and said "that [it] is the best new musical to open on Broadway this season is inarguable, but that's not saying much" (this was before Piazza and Spelling Bee opened on Broadway).

Updated On: 5/2/05 at 11:51 PM

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:58pm

Thanks, margo...still waitin on Brantleys review! tick tock, ben!

[Mattio98]

Posted: 5/2/05 at 11:59pm

Margo is right- Brantley does rave for a bunch of shows every season. However, as illustrated in the above list, Brantley tends to rave much more for straight plays than for musicals. Thus, many claim that Brantley hates musical theatre. I don't know if I quite agree but I do find that he's a lot more cynical when dealing with musicals.