Words Matter: A Review of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
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In The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (which we shall henceforth refer to simply as "Spelling Bee" because the full title is just too damn long), a new musical produced by the Sandbox Collective, students in a fictional American middle school compete for the top prize (a $200 gift certificate and bragging rights) in, you guessed it, a spelling bee.
Live theater is, for the most part, a medium most often appreciated by intellectuals and those with more fastidious artistic tastes, and a musical about kids going up onstage to spell tough words would theoretically narrow audiences even further.
But, surprisingly, this joyous, thoroughly engaging, and smart production would undoubtedly appeal to a broad audience base just looking to have a rollicking good time at the theater.
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This isn’t the first time the musical is being staged in the Philippines. Atlantis Productions premiered Spelling Bee in the Philippines all the way back in 2009 at the Carlos P. Romulo Theater. I remember catching that show, but not much else (that was 15 years ago, gimme a break). But did have a good time, as evidenced by a Facebook status, in which I claimed that I am, in fact, the real champion of the aforementioned spelling bee.
The conceit of the musical is simple: it’s a spelling bee happening (mostly) in real time, and we, the audience, play the actual audience watching the competition. In that sense, it’s interactive because we clap, laugh, and basically react to whatever happening’s onstage as if we were watching a spelling bee in real life. The cast doesn’t need to break the fourth wall because it essentially doesn’t exist.
An additional interactive element is that it enlists audience members (in the case of the show I caught, local celebrities) to participate as contestants. From what I could tell, the additional cast members are not given the words they have to spell ahead of time and so how they do in the competition is based entirely on how good a speller they are in real life. It helps, of course, if the words are rather elementary, such as cow or dinosaur, but tough luck if you get a word like tittup or phylactery or strabismus.
Just before the show, I chatted with 9Works Theatrical’s co-founder and managing artistic director of The Sandbox Collective Toff De Venecia, who shared that they cast Gen Z actors to play the roles of the students, hewing closer to what they were actually meant to be in the original production. This was good thinking on their part. It’s a little like the phenomenon of casting adult actors to play high schoolers in teen rom-coms or TV series—it’s jarring and more than a little annoying. In this case, the actors they chose for the competitors more or less fit, not just in terms of their age, but their capabilities. Special mention to the actors who portrayed Chip Tolentino (Luis Marcelo), Olive Ostrovsky (Angela Ken), and Marcy Park (AC Bonifacio) for imbuing their characters with just enough nuance so they don’t descend into stereotypes.
The adult actors, of course, were riveting scene-stealers, as expected. Liesl Batucan-Del Rosario was equal parts endearing and encouraging as former champion Rona Lisa Paretti, and 9WT’s Robbie Guevarra played the stern and sneering Vice Principal Douglas Panch perfectly.
In case you think this is just a straight-up spelling contest featuring overachieving prepubescents, you’re W-R-O-N-G. Spelling Bee features clever dialogue and intensely catchy songs (“Life is Pandemonium,” especially) but it has tons to say about the pressures kids go through at school to be the absolute best no matter the consequences, the fractured relationships between parents and their kids, and the illusion of popularity and acceptance within communities and tribes.
One can choose to look at Spelling Bee as a dress rehearsal for the much more daunting world of real life after school, but at surface level—as an incredibly fun, entertaining peek into the high-stakes world of competitive spelling—it works just fine. Personally, I choose to see it as a loving tribute to the power of words, and the absolute satisfaction and thrill we feel at finding and using the right word at the right time (and knowing how to spell said word correctly).
If anything, watching Spelling Bee will immensely help with your vocabulary. And that’s nothing to be lugubrious about.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs from February 24 to March 17, 2024, at the Power Mac Center Spotlight Black Box Theater, Circuit Makati. Explore #SpellSandbox2024 #SandboxNowandTen for more information.
