THE ONLY SHOW YOU'LL EVER SEE IN WHICH THE WORD "SYZYGY" APPEARS MORE THAN FIVE TIMES: I finally got around to seeing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee last week. Thinking about it uncritically, the show is a lot of fun, and parts of it are hysterical. In particular, the fun poked at the types of sentences provided to spellers at spelling bees is a hoot. (A couple of examples: "Billy, put down that phylactery -- we're Episcopalian." "Sally's mother told her that it was her cystitis that made her special.") There is a great bit involving an appearance by a certain member of the Trinity as well as a song entitled "My Unfortunate Erection," which made all of the eight-year-olds and eight-year-olds-at-heart howl with laughter. I enjoyed it. I really did.
Ultimately, though, Spelling Bee felt like an Off-Broadway show. Which is, of course, what it is -- or at least what it was. But when you're plunking down the now-de-rigeur hundred bucks for the privilege of seeing a bunch of people sing on a stage for 90 minutes, you kind of expect something a little more transporting. The epically brilliant Urinetown was at core a Broadway musical. As was the somewhat-less-brilliant-but-still-pretty-damned-impressive Avenue Q. Each of them started out as funky little shows in funky little theatres, but by the time they made it to the Great White Way, they'd matured into something more. Spelling Bee never quite gets there. It feels like a show that stemmed from a bunch of people noodling around in a black box improv studio. And that, enjoyable though it may be, isn't what a Broadway musical is supposed to feel like.
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