Spelling Bee isn’t serious, just laughs

Anyone looking for a nuance-heavy, thought-provoking and dramatic musical that will haunt long after curtain call will not find it in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” the most recent musical to show at IU Auditorium.  

Instead, a theatergoer can get almost constant laughs from the hilarious hijinks of adults portraying not-so-typical teenagers and experience the fright that comes with remembering adolescence.

From the opening title song alone, the show does not pretend to be mature. The fact that it is seems completely and perfectly accidental. The young entrants are introduced as zany but familiar characters: the academically pressured parochial schoolgirl, the overly competitive social outcast, the political activist, the eccentric, the brain and the champion.  

Beside them are two faculty members with issues of their own and a questionable comfort counselor.  

The cast is a vocal powerhouse, and all are equally talented at vaulting into these outlandish roles. Rachel Sheinkin’s bold script merges seamlessly with songs by William Finn, and both demand extreme effort from beginning to end. The action constantly escalates until the kids’ collective snapping point explodes into the wildly energetic “Pandemonium,” in direct contrast with “The I Love You Song,” the one puncture in the musical’s ecstatic bubble that tells its secret.  

Underneath the surface humor, this show has at least one extra layer. Topics both current (Jonas Brothers hysteria, Blagojevich) and ongoing (jihad, political dissent) are brought up without hesitation. Despite its mindless premise, the audience is given plenty to think about.

It also gives the attendees a good deal to look at. Costumes by Jennifer Caprio set the characters impossibly higher on the oddness scale, while Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design of a school gymnasium appears to be pulled straight out of a preteen’s doodle pad.   

“Spelling Bee” does fall back on a few classic safeguards – audience participation, awkward pauses that ultimately result in a few guffaws – but, delightfully, it does not need the comic protection and would probably do better without it.  

The crowning achievement of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is its ability to amuse and relate to those long past the throes of late childhood and those presently caught in it. The show is worth the cost and, with only one act, well worth the time. No need to spell it out.