‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ at Cain Park is Filled With Lovably Clumsy Characters

There are some shows in the huge and groaning anthology of stage musicals that are simply impervious to critical comment. Because no matter how bad some or all of the performers are, and no matter how ham-handed the direction, something like The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will always be saved by the Tony Award-winning book by Rachel Sheinkin.

The entire two-act play is basically a spelling bee in which a gaggle of snot-nosed (literally) middle-schoolers fence with letters to spell unpronounceable words. Happily, in this Cain Park version which I saw at a preview performance, the direction by Patrick Ciamacco was energetic and the characters were all sufficiently dweeby as they fought off family issues, physical complications, and in one case a rogue boner to nab the championship.

There are six finalists in the competition, a lineup which is temporarily enlarged at every performance with four volunteer audience members selected beforehand, each of whom are quickly dispatched. After that, the play mostly consists of the usual spelling bee mechanics.

Vice-Principal Douglas Panch (Brian Altman) says each spelling word while gazing longingly at his alluring assistant Rona Lisa Peretti (Bridie Carroll), a former spelling bee champ—BTW, that’s not the stiffy in question. The contestants ask questions about the word, then they spell. If they hear the dreaded ding of a bell, they are comforted and ushered off the stage by a terrifying ex-con named Mitch (Geoffrey Short, who sings as well as he glowers), who is doing the gig as part of his mandatory community service.

If you question how many laughs could be generated by a play featuring a geeky middle-school spelling bee, the answer is a ton. Each time the spellers are introduced, and every time the participants ask for their spelling word to be defined or used in a sentence, Sheinkin nails a laugh line you don’t see coming. After providing the definition of the word cystitis as a bladder infection, Panch offers the helpful sentence usage: “Susie’s mother said it was her cystitis that made her special.”

The student contestants each have their entertaining moments. The adorable son of hippies named Leaf Coneybear (Andres Martinez) falls into a trance when spelling his words while Logainne SchwartzandGrubenierre (a sparky Sophia Ruiz), the daughter of a hyphen-rejecting gay male couple, lisps juicily through her spelling challenges.

As the spookily efficient spelling machine Marcy Park, Kayla Petersen not only nails her letters but also fashions a loose-limbed dance in her song “I Speak Six Languages,” a number that falls just short of being a showstopper. And Gabriel J. Hill turns boy scout Chip Tolentino from an uber-confident spelling jock to a quivering lump of embarrassment when his Trouser Weasel decides to rise to the occasion.

The show tries to reach for some real emotion when William Barfee (a perpetually tormented and contorted Seth Crawford) and Olive Ostrovsky (Kate Day Magocsi, who has a killer singing voice) fall in spelling bee love. But as good as they are individually, the attempted bee-utiful pairing falls flat.

Even though the show’s one-joke format begins to feel exhausted in the second act, Bee is held together by Altman and Carroll. The former offers a richly amusing deadpan delivery of his lines and the latter gets consistent laughs with her fractured mini-profiles of the students.

While the music and lyrics by William Finn are serviceable, the engine of this Bee is in the sting of Sheinkin’s timeless gags. Long may this clumsily titled show with these lovably clumsy characters live, spell and prosper.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Through June 9 at Cain Park. 14591 Superior Road between Taylor Road and Lee Road in Cleveland Heights, 216-371-3000, www.cainpark.com.

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