The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Reviews- Page 4

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:05am

Random side note: The ad-libs/comments about the contestants were hysterical. For the audience members, the announcer said when she went up 'Ms. Smith's favorite television show is Thats So Raven'. It was just hysterical! (I think ya kinda had to be there LOL) Everyone was peeing their pants laughing. Bernadette and Donna were belly laughing the entire show. This is such an amazing production!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:08am

Well, c'mon, how many perfect new original musicals open in a given season? Or if not perfect, minimally flawed? Two? Maybe three, if you're very very lucky? Meanwhile dozens of first rate new plays and play revivals open every season on and off-Broadway. It's the nature of the beast.

Musicals are HARD to get right and any one element -- book, music, lyrics, direction, choreography, design -- being faulty can doom the entire enterprise. Good plays cost less far less to mount and have fewer elements that could go wrong -- get a good script and some good actors together and you're 90% of the way there.

It's inevitably going to be true of Brantley and every other critic who covers the major productions that open on and off Broadway each season that they're going to see three or four or five good non-musical plays for every one decent musical that comes along, thus there will be MANY more raves for plays than musicals.

[Mattio98]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:10am

You make a good point. I just feel that when you read Brantley's actual reviews of many musicals, you can almost taste his cynicism and disgust at the genre.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:10am

true that ms. channing!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:22am

He's not strong with new composers -- Finn, Guettel, LaChiusa, Tesori et al -- because he has virtually no training or musical background to speak of, so he has no idea how to evaluate their shows (rather disconcerting when the most powerful critic in the American Theatre is musically illiterate -- not a good thing for the future of the genre). Though he did like the revival of LaChiusa's "First Lady Suite" last year.

However, if a score is no more harmonically complex than, say, Jerry Herman, is sort of bouncy and silly OR if it's Sondheim (whom I'm sure he doesn't have a clue about, but he knows he'd better not knock if he is to be taken seriously) he generally responds well. Look at his raves for The Producers, Hairspray, Avenue Q, Movin Out, Assassins et al.

Updated On: 5/3/05 at 12:22 AM

[Mattio98]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:30am

Well put Margo. At least he enjoyed First Lady Suite. That was really a great show.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 1:06am

Newark Star-Ledger is a Rave:

"A delightful musical, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" proved such a winner at Second Stage earlier this season that it has moved to the 680-seat Circle in the Square, where the show reopened last night.

If anything, this quirky little charmer about a bunch of 'tweens heatedly engaged in an orthographics match seems even brighter and funnier in its new Broadway environs.

Buzzing along on William Finn's breezy score, "Spelling Bee" registers as particularly imaginative in a season short on fresh ideas, although Rachel Sheinkin's story is easy to summarize:

Basically, the 105-minute show humorously exhibits some academic whiz kids as they desperately attempt to spell their way to victory, despite problems with personal insecurities and unhelpful parents.

It's a timeless situation with which plenty of people, young and old, surely can identify........

Sophisticated in its integration of words and music, yet appealing in effect, "Spelling Bee" is thoroughly enjoyable, from A to Z."



http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1115095971156520.xml

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 1:16am

Theatremania is a Rave:

"Great news! The American musical comedy -- with equal emphasis on the "musical" part and the "comedy" part -- is alive and well. This season, woe is us, there's been an onslaught of reasons to doubt that contention; genre aficionados have been assailed with bloated tuners containing what some producers feel are recognizable and therefore commercial elements. No need to mention the offenders, but they are legion.

But hold the (cell)phone: Some other producers recognize that the future of the American musical doesn't lie with multi-million-dollar budgets expended on what are so wrongly perceived as fail-safe ingredients. Some producers, like the not-for-profit Vineyard and Second Stage Theatre folks, understand that it's more promising to go with relatively low-budget fare so that risks can be taken, adventurous notions can be explored, and newcomers in every department can be given a chance to show their stuff.

So, just as Avenue Q was last year's surprise click, this year our sunken spirits are raised by The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. With a book by Rachel Sheinkin from Rebecca Feldman's conception and a score by William Finn, the musical is a treat and a half. Although it has urgent things to say about the American obsession with being number one, it connects primarily because Feldman, Sheinkin, and Finn have lit on a milieu in which to have a good deal of fun with music and words -- many of those words literally spelled out.
______________________________________________________________

"Moving The 25th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee to a Broadway house looked to be a risky endeavor, but the producers turn out to know just what they're doing. Circle in the Square, which set designer Beowulf Boritt has turned into a 360-degree high school gym (conducive lobby included), is a space that lends itself to a multitude of opportunities. James Lapine has taken advantage of all of them. In a season when too many directors have sent actors scurrying through the audience in a misguided attempt to make ticket-buyers part of a play's world, Lapine is the one who has made this conceit work like a charm. Some of the hyperkinetic activity went on when the endlessly charming and full-of-giggles musical bowed at Second Stage in February, but even more of it is cheerfully afoot now. There's even a divine appearance by a divine body, unexpectedly floating in on stage mist. Surrounded by numerous felt banners that declare "Bully-Free Zone" or promote the school's athletic team, the Piranhas, this peripatetic cast continues to realize beautifully Sheinkin's quirky book and Finn's blissfully idiosyncratic score. "


http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/5974

Updated On: 5/3/05 at 01:16 AM

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 1:18am

i am just so happy... i'm pretty confident in putting money on james lapine for best director... anyone else?

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 1:21am

We'll see. Mike Nichols is SUCH a popular figure that it wouldn't surprise me if he wins for SPAMALOT. Lapine and Barlett Sher (Piazza) deserve it more, though.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 1:24am

i feel that most people will be more impressed with lapine's direction: using adults to play kids, being in a thrust theatre, AND using audience members... that's a feat for it to come off well. over sher's more straight-forward (yet still great) direction. i just am not really a fan of anything spamalot related.

[Plum]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 1:27am

Just about all the pieces are on the board now; I think it'll take a week or so for the Tony buzz to start really sorting itself out.

And man, did all the interesting shows have to open in the spring this year? I can't get to NYC until the 14th and it's killing me.

[leomaxfrank]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 2:52am

Full-out raves! I love it!

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 7:51am

Bump. Is the POST up online yet?

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 7:53am

The NY Daily News is mixed and a little negative. Howard Kissel pisses me off sometimes.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater/story/305860p-261728c.html

[buskeat]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 8:06am

Wasn't Kissel the only critic that gave it a negative review in its original run? Hardly a surprise.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 8:10am

The Journal News (Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland counties) is very positive. I'd call it a rave. Jacques LeSourd finally got one right after a while of questionable reviews (positive for BKLYN, mixed to a bit negative for DRS)
Updated On: 5/3/05 at 08:10 AM

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 8:47am

No, buskeat. Michael Feingold in the VOICE, John Simon and Peter Filicia also spoke for those of us who were less than totally enthalled by SPELLING BEE. Filicias review comes closest to my own feelings about the show. As usual with him, even with a show he isn't wild about, he will point out and praise its good qualities.

And he makes it clear that he likes Finn a lot. Just not this show.


***************************************************
When we last left me, I was sitting in the front row at Second Stage, getting ready to see a new smash hit. In a season where one new musical has been worse than the other, I was agog with anticipation at the prospect of seeing a tuner that's been close to universally acclaimed: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. What's more, it's the new William Finn musical -- the same William Finn who wrote In Trousers, which in April, 1979 had me racing home after its first preview to call every musical theater enthusiast I knew. I wanted to tell them that someone really important had arrived on the scene; I was up till two in the morning.
Not everyone likes In Trousers, but almost every critic adored Spelling Bee. "Letter-perfect," (Brown, Entertainment Weekly). "Downright hilarious" (McCarter, New York Sun). "Very nice, very, very, very, nice" (Winer, Newsday). "Can you spell b-e-t-t-e-r t-h-a-n B-r-o-a-d-w-a-y?" (Shapiro, Philadelphia Inquirer). "How do you spell hit?" (Kuchwara, Associated Press). "A nonpareil musical" (Johnson, Hartford Courant). Le Sourd's review in the Journal News was headlined "A w-i-n-n-e-r" and Marks's in the Washington Post was topped by "Funniest Thing on Seven Consonants." Ten there was the rave the production most wanted: "An entirely adorable new musical" (Isherwood, New York Times). My brother wizards had spoken! This was a good one -- nay, a great one.

As I'll bet you've inferred by now, I didn't adore the show. Granted, part of this resulted from The Great Expectations Syndrome, with which we're all familiar: We hear that a show is magnificent, superb, astonishing, so when we see it, it can't possibly live up to its press clippings. How well I remember that Saturday in August, 1975 when I saw the matinee of Chicago, which had opened to mixed reviews, and the evening performance of A Chorus Line, which had received unqualified raves. I wound up preferring Chicago because it was so much better than I'd been led to believe. And though A Chorus Line was great, was it that great?

On the other end of the spectrum is The Lower Depths Syndrome: We hear that a show stinks so we go expecting to suffer, but we cheerily say as we leave the theater, "Hey, that wasn't so bad!" With Prettybelle, the musical that opened and closed in Boston in 1971, I witnessed both syndromes at work, for I saw the show four times. At the first two previews, the audience was hot to see a musical that starred Angela Lansbury, with a score by the Funny Girl team, staged by the director-choreographer of Hello, Dolly!. Were they furious! Some weeks later, after the producer announced that he was closing the show, I attended the final Wednesday matinee and the Saturday night closing -- and, yes, I heard many people cheerily say as they left the theater, "Hey, that wasn't so bad!"

What I didn't like about Bee can also be gleaned from what the critics wrote about the contestants: "socially challenged students" (Johnson), "a menagerie of misfit achievers" (Brown), a "freakish mix of youngsters, genus Geekus" (Isherwood). There was Marcy Park, who, according to Isherwood, is "frightfully self-possessed"; Olive Ostrovsky, who is "awkward" (Johnson) and "gawky" (Isherwood); Chip Tolentino, "terminally nerdy" (Le Sourd) and "clumsy" (Winer); Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, who "speaks in a spittle-thick lisp" (Johnson); Leaf Coneybear, a "daffy" (Kuchwara) "oddball" (Rooney, Variety) who "goes into a cross-eyed trance" (LeSourd) when spelling his words. But the one in which everyone took the most interest was William Barfee, a "quivering mass" (Kuchwara), "a big nerdy schlub with retarded social grace" (Shapiro) who's "overweight and sloppy...a huffing, puffing galoot with his untucked shirtfront" (Johnson) "afflicted with numerous allergies and other health problems" (LeSourd) -- meaning his "bad sinuses and worse hair" (McCarter).

May I ask why so many kids who are accomplished in an academic skill -- spelling -- must be ridiculed? In playwriting, there's such a thing as "orchestration of character." In other words, you should have different types on the stage; one of this type of person, one of that. Bee stacks the deck to suggest that most kids who are smart at spelling are undesirable dorks who can't cope well with real life and the outside world. Aren't kids who are terrific at spelling entitled to some admiration? Yet at least three of the six kids in the show -- Leaf, Olive, and Logainne -- have names designed to elicit tee-hees. More to the point, Leaf, William, and Logainne are made to look utterly ridiculous. Are 50% of actual spelling bee contestants this atrociously socialized? Leaf contorts his mouth when he spells. William dresses sloppily -- shirttail out -- for a cheap laugh, though he might have been funnier had he tried to spruce up for the competition and failed. As for Logainne, she has the strangest arrangement of pigtails I've ever seen on a young lady's head. And she's the one with two gay fathers? These guys would never be chosen to be consultants on Bravo's Queer Eye makeover series, I'll tell you that.
There's a pervasive anti-intellectual bias going on in this show, which we don't need in an era when people seem to be less and less educated. Even the character of Mr. Panch -- cited as "a severely hung-up school official" by Shapiro -- seems unbalanced and incompetent. Why couldn't he be characterized as a terrific person, as so many in the teaching profession are? Finally: When Logainne asks Panch to give her a sentence with the word 'strabismus,' he replies, "In the schoolyard, Billy protested that he wasn't cockeyed. 'I suffer from strabismus,' he said, whereupon the bullies beat him harder." Even that! Mock the kid with the bad vision and then give him a playground beating!

Howard Kissel of the Daily News didn't like the show, but not for the reason I'm stating. And please let me make clear that I find Bee skillfully written, composed, directed, and performed. I just hate to see bright kids mocked. Only Frank Scheck of the Post seemed to see what I saw: "Their broad turns sometimes smack more of condescension than affection," he wrote. But we're in a distinct minority. Johnson feels that the the show "has a big heart and an even bigger intellect." According to Matthew Murray of Talkin' Broadway, it's "wrapped up in so many good feelings and huge laughs that you'll have to just sit back (and) grin," while Variety's Rooney wrote that the "winning new musical" is "so generously warm-hearted, only the most bitter misanthrope could resist its charms." I guess that's me. Mind you, I'm not saying that I'm right and most everyone else is wrong. Things hit us the way they hit us. Some people will say to me, "Lighten up!" -- to which I'll reply, "I would have gladly lightened up if the creators had lightened up on their characters and hadn't imposed such a heavy hand on them."

But I suspect that there's something else going on here, and it involves William Finn. When I interviewed him during Falsettos rehearsals in 1992, I asked, "How would you describe yourself?" and he immediately answered in a voice filled with self-loathing, "A big fat Jew." Why didn't he say that he was a great composer? (He is.) Or a novel lyricist? (He is.) Or a theatrical visionary? (That, too.) All right, maybe he didn't want to blow his own horn that loudly and felt he should be modest in describing himself, but he crossed the line of self-deprecation. I know that my beef with Bee is also with librettist Rachel Sheinkin and perhaps even conceiver Rebecca Feldman, but I suspect that the self-denigrating Finn was the muscle on this show and set its tone. You're terrific, Bill. Give yourself a break -- and in the future, would you give your characters a break, too?






Maybe Its Me

Updated On: 5/3/05 at 08:47 AM

Posted: 5/3/05 at 10:13am

Man, do I hate that (Filicia) review. I haven't seen the show yet, so it's not that I disagree with his opinions, I hate the idea that a reviewer seems more concerned with his preconcepion of a show than what happens on stage. The most unhelpful word a reviewer can use is "Overrated": What the hell does that tell me? People say that "Show Boat" is the greatest musical of all time. If Filicias sees it, thinks it's the SECOND greatest musical of all time does he dismiss it as "overrated"?

Then, he runs down what the other reviewers thought. Who cares? He sure shouldn't. It's his review- I'd hope he could write it without needing to do a roll call. Again, the review should be about what's onstage, not in the NY Times.

It's interesting to read that he thought the show was defamatory toward Spelling Bee Participants. Can we assume that there are more than a few Bees in Mr. Filicia's past-- and bonnet?

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 10:56am

I don't know if he had any "Bees" in his past, but Filicia has written at length about being abused as a kid for liking show music. In one column of a few years ago he cheerfully wrote about being picked on by the school bully when he got his brand-new recording of LITTLE MARY SUNSHINE. So you can just guess what HIS nickname became for the rest of the school year!

I think the reason that Filicia gave the roll call of other reviewers was to illustrate that the majority of critics really went for SPELLING BEE in a big way whereas he didn't - and from his history of liking Finn, he obviously thinks he SHOULD have liked BEE too. But he didn't.

I like Felicia precisely because of how he'll give you some personal background on his take of a show (and does it far less pointedly than the excellent Ken Mandlebaum).

Updated On: 5/3/05 at 10:56 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 11:38am

That last review was written by Michael Fiegngold, NOT Peter Filichia.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 11:44am

Has anyone posted THE NY POST review yet? Apparently Clive Barnes hated it.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 11:59am

Margo - that is Filicias review. Click on the link.

Feingold's review doesn't seem to be on-line at this time.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:08pm

i'll look in the wash post today for you guys to see if marks' review is up.. for some reason the post always delays putting their broadway reviews online. can i remind everyone that i'm taking a class with him next semester on theatre criticism! yay.

[Plum]

Posted: 5/3/05 at 12:24pm

"Spelling Bee," with a score by William Finn and book by ­Rachel Sheinkin, is an ­elongated skit. It is hilarious that there is a ­separate credit for Rebecca Sheinkin, who "conceived" this painfully cutesy farrago.

Since when is giving someone credit for their work "hilarious"? I'm not too fond of critic-bashing, but dear lord, that's an ignorant statement on Kissel's part.