25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

By Linda Winer | STAFF WRITER

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.

If grown-ups pretending to be children creep you out, audience participation makes you squirm and contests seem too cheesy to use as theater, you've got good taste. On the other hand, good taste has delightfully little to do with "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the slim but endearingly deranged spelling-bee spoof that opened last night at Second Stage with sugarplums of "Avenue Q" and "Urinetown" dancing in producers' eyes.

Much like those offbeat Broadway hits, the project began life way Off-Broadway. It was by Rebecca Feldman and a group called The Farm. By the time the material was developed at the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires, the idea was transformed into a musical with score by William Finn, the Tony Award-winning original of such hilariously heartbreaking musicals as "Falsettos" and "A New Brain."

Where Finn's work tends to make us laugh to keep from sobbing, this 105-minute chamber piece has fizzier trifles and Rachel Sheinkin's smartly goofy book on its twisted little mind. The production, directed with a light hand and a great heart by Finn specialist James Lapine, never loses touch with the anxiety communicated so effectively by "Spellbound," the recent documentary about children and spelling bees.

Lapine always has had a remarkable way of making child actors seem natural. How funny that he also can make grown-up actors play kids without a fleck of the usual patronizing ickiness. Everyone embodies the hopes and mopes with an admirable mix of shamelessness and compassion.

There is a star-making performance by Dan Fogler as William Barfee, introduced as Barf by the assistant principal with the dark history (Reiss) and corrected by the boy "with an accent aigue." The kid is a slob, a big nerdy smarty-pants with a "magic foot" with which he spells out his words on the floor.

We are in a school gym, decorated by Beowulf Boritt almost to smell like old socks yet to promise salvation. Finn's music is less ambitious than his major work, but simple is never confused with simple-minded. With a small combo in the wings, the smartly innocent lyrics celebrate and mutilate a tiny world "where they treat you well,/ all because we love to spell." None of the children believe that just "being here is winning," but manage to persuade us that such a fantasy is "very nice, very very very nice."

Ditto the show.

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE. Music and lyrics by William Finn, book by Rachel Sheinkin, directed by James Lapine. Circle in the Square Theatre, 50th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. Seen at Thursday preview.