• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
MENUMENU
MENUMENU
  • Home
  • About
    • Contact Us
    • FlaglerLive Board of Directors
    • Comment Policy
    • Mission Statement
    • Our Values
    • Privacy Policy
  • Live Calendar
  • Submit Obituary
  • Submit an Event
  • Support FlaglerLive
  • Advertise on FlaglerLive (386) 503-3808
  • Search Results

FlaglerLive

No Bull, no Fluff, No Smudges

MENUMENU
  • Flagler
    • Flagler County Commission
    • Beverly Beach
    • Economic Development Council
    • Flagler History
    • Mondex/Daytona North
    • The Hammock
    • Tourist Development Council
  • Palm Coast
    • Palm Coast City Council
    • Palm Coast Crime
  • Bunnell
    • Bunnell City Commission
    • Bunnell Crime
  • Flagler Beach
    • Flagler Beach City Commission
    • Flagler Beach Crime
  • Cops/Courts
    • Circuit & County Court
    • Florida Supreme Court
    • Federal Courts
    • Flagler 911
    • Fire House
    • Flagler County Sheriff
    • Flagler Jail Bookings
    • Traffic Accidents
  • Rights & Liberties
    • Fourth Amendment
    • First Amendment
    • Privacy
    • Second Amendment
    • Seventh Amendment
    • Sixth Amendment
    • Sunshine Law
    • Third Amendment
    • Religion & Beliefs
    • Human Rights
    • Immigration
    • Labor Rights
    • 14th Amendment
    • Civil Rights
  • Schools
    • Adult Education
    • Belle Terre Elementary
    • Buddy Taylor Middle
    • Bunnell Elementary
    • Charter Schools
    • Daytona State College
    • Flagler County School Board
    • Flagler Palm Coast High School
    • Higher Education
    • Imagine School
    • Indian Trails Middle
    • Matanzas High School
    • Old Kings Elementary
    • Rymfire Elementary
    • Stetson University
    • Wadsworth Elementary
    • University of Florida/Florida State
  • Economy
    • Jobs & Unemployment
    • Business & Economy
    • Development & Sprawl
    • Leisure & Tourism
    • Local Business
    • Local Media
    • Real Estate & Development
    • Taxes
  • Commentary
    • The Conversation
    • Pierre Tristam
    • Diane Roberts
    • Guest Columns
    • Byblos
    • Editor's Blog
  • Culture
    • African American Cultural Society
    • Arts in Palm Coast & Flagler
    • Books
    • City Repertory Theatre
    • Flagler Auditorium
    • Flagler Playhouse
    • Flagler Youth Orchestra
    • Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra
    • Palm Coast Arts Foundation
    • Special Events
  • Elections 2024
    • Amendments and Referendums
    • Presidential Election
    • Campaign Finance
    • City Elections
    • Congressional
    • Constitutionals
    • Courts
    • Governor
    • Polls
    • Voting Rights
  • Florida
    • Federal Politics
    • Florida History
    • Florida Legislature
    • Florida Legislature
    • Ron DeSantis
  • Health & Society
    • Flagler County Health Department
    • Ask the Doctor Column
    • Health Care
    • Health Care Business
    • Covid-19
    • Children and Families
    • Medicaid and Medicare
    • Mental Health
    • Poverty
    • Violence
  • All Else
    • Daily Briefing
    • Americana
    • Obituaries
    • News Briefs
    • Weather and Climate
    • Wildlife

Laughs in a Trance at Flagler Playhouse’s “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”

October 1, 2011 | FlaglerLive | 2 Comments

Speaking in tongues: John Eidman's Leaf Coneybear is in the zone at "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" (© FlaglerLive)

Middle school is hard enough to sit through. Imagine a middle school spelling bee. It is usually torture for those on stage and off. It doesn’t necessarily last long but feels like an eternity anyway. It’s tense and humorless. Whenever words are used in a sentence, the result might as well be cribbed from a how-to manual on hanging shower-curtain rings. Audiences are slight. They can be onerous. The few people who turn out to county spelling bees almost always have a child in play, and odds are they’ll walk away somewhere between disappointed and crushed, since there can only be one winner.


Click On:

  • Between “Laramie” and “Spelling Bee,” All Flagler’s a Stage
  • “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead”: Raunchy, Earnest, Serious Fun at the Flagler Playhouse
  • “The Laramie Project” at Palm Coast’s New Repertory Theatre: This Is Who We Are
  • The Flagler Playhouse Archives


Now take all those dynamics, reverse them, and you get the unlikely charms of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” the Flagler Playhouse’s 33rd-season inaugural musical comedy, which opened Friday and runs through Oct. 9.

The participants are still middle school misfits, all of them bundles of quirks and neuroses, but lovable down to their knee-high socks, lisps, butt-clenching knickers and white-boy Afros. The competition lasts about two hours but packs more laughs in a minute than your average 22-minute sitcom. (Phylactery: May I have a sentence please? “Billy, put down that phylactery—we’re Episcopalian.”) The audience is likely to be very large, loud and cheerful, and of course every one of the misfits on stage proves to be a winner beyond the cliché.

It's Barfee: The stormy Beau Wade. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)
You can’t help but root for Leaf Coneybear (John Eidman), the stick-figured, cape-wearing nerd (“I’ve never been in a gymnasium before”) who’d never have made it to the bee had his school’s real winner and runner-up not had to be at a bar mitzvah. Or the abandoned Olive Ostrovsky (Caitlin Eriser) whose roadkill costume won her second place at a Halloween contest while her mom has left her for a year to find herself at an ashram in India. Or Chip Tolentino (Vince Mirabile), the cocky ace speller until an erection interferes (“My unfortunate erection/Is destroying my perfection,” he sings, after turning snack-vendor, “Anyone for buying the shit that I’m selling/Because my stiffy has ruined my spelling?” That verbal dropping is as racy as the play gets). Not to worry: stiffed Chip redeems himself in a Jesus Christ cameo that Woody Allen could’ve written. Or Schwarzy, short for Schwartzandgrubiennaire (Agata Sokolska, our local Zooey Deschanel understudy), “head of the Gay-Straight Alliance at her elementary school” and the product of two gay dads. She can’t spell without first fingering-out the word on her forearm.

Schwarzy, lispy and weird: Agata Sokolska.
(© FlaglerLive)
The cast of nine is augmented in the first half by members of the audience picked mostly at random right before the play to join the actors on stage, as spellers. The Playhouse is making sure it’s not picking actor wannabes but the sort of people who, like the misfits, wouldn’t know what to do with themselves on stage or who may pass for local celebrities—the odd mayor or county commissioner or school board member, who are encouraged to show up. That element of the unexpected gives each evening its feel of improv. The pronouncer, incidentally, is the slightly postal vice-principal, Douglas Panch (the perfectly stiff Terence Van Auken and his equally stiff pocket protector) because, as sidekick Rona Lisa Peretti (Carrie Van Tol) tells us, “unfortunately our pronouncer, Superintendent Janet Valentine, is unable to attend. She is in Egypt, interviewing with Bill Delbrugge.”

Other delicious performances include Van Tol’s Peretti, whose starched and taut blue dress seems to ache for a stain, and Beau Wade’s very physical William Barfee, the Afro- bear of a guy who can’t spell anything without writing it out on the floor with his foot, and whose name is the running pun of the show.

The play was written by Rachel Sheinkin, who in 2005 got the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for best book for “Spelling Bee.” (The play got five Tony awards in all.) The writing more than anything is what keeps the play’s momentum going: it’s sharp and quick-witted, combining just enough satire and social commentary (“she’s pro-choice but still a virgin,” goes one character’s sum-up) with concessions to each character’s idiosyncrasies, keeping the story from tripping into the maudlin or the formulaic. The weaknesses here are the music and the lyrics: neither adds much to the show, and at times even detracts from it. The music is surprisingly forgettable, considering the composer: William Finn. The lyrics are bunches of terrific epigrams but don’t add up to songs, exactly. They rather live up to one of the numbers’ title (“Pandemonium”).


As always in community theater, most of the actors can’t pull off the demands on the voice—I’m not blaming them: no one expects Broadway-quality singing on State Road 100—though just as always, there are notable exceptions: Caitlin Eriser’s Olive Ostrovsky may be uncertain of herself. Her voice isn’t.

“The 25th Putnam County Spelling Bee” is inspired at least in part by the reality show genre, where  foibles and insecurities make up the bulk of the material—and the audience’s attraction: train wrecks are interesting. The difference with Sheinkin’s writing is the absence of that mean-spiritedness that make reality shows unbearable to watch without suspending one’s sense of empathy.

Half-way through the show the improvising audience members have been disqualified, as have a couple members of the main cast (though they return in alternate roles), leaving five or six contestants vying for the trophy—and our hearts. The play is entirely in character when it pulls off what looks suspiciously like a romance between the last two contestants, whose identity you’ll have to find out for yourself, though the winning word is: Weltanschauung (“meaning one’s personal perspective, your philosophy, the way you look at the world,” or a play). And in the final frames we’re told what becomes of the characters by each of them. It’s enough to leave the theater very much reassured by their variously dysfunctional fates, including Chip’s, who “made it through adolescence, and in the course of time came to appreciate his erections. As did many others.”

A Spelling Bee Gallery

For best viewing, click on one of the images rather than slideshow option: you’ll get fuller-screen resolutions. Use the arrows to go forward.

[nggallery id=87]

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

At the Flagler Playhouse, Sept. 23, 24, 25, 30 and Oct. 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9. Tickets are $20 for adults, $12 for students, less if you buy season tickets. Call the box office at 386/586-0773.

Music and Lyrics by William Finn; Book by Rachel Sheinkin; Directed by Judi Ernst; Musical Director: Carol Partelow; Choreographer: Wendy Ellis.

Cast:

Chip Tolentino (and Jesus): Vincent Mirabile
Schwarzy: Agata Sokolska
Leaf Coneybear (and Schwarzy’s Dad): John Eidman
William Barfee (and Olive’s Dad): Beau Wade
Marcy Park: Gabriella Giuliano
Olive Ostrovsky: Caitlin Eriser
Rona Lisa Perritti (and Olive’s Mom): Carrie Van Tol
Douglas Panch: Terence Van Auken
Mitch Mahoney (and Dan Dad): Peter F Gutierrez
Micky: Valerie Betts

Originally published on Sept. 25, 2011

Support FlaglerLive's End of Year Fundraiser
Thank you readers for getting us to--and past--our year-end fund-raising goal yet again. It’s a bracing way to mark our 15th year at FlaglerLive. Our donors are just a fraction of the 25,000 readers who seek us out for the best-reported, most timely, trustworthy, and independent local news site anywhere, without paywall. FlaglerLive is free. Fighting misinformation and keeping democracy in the sunshine 365/7/24 isn’t free. Take a brief moment, become a champion of fearless, enlightening journalism. Any amount helps. We’re a 501(c)(3) non-profit news organization. Donations are tax deductible.  
You may donate openly or anonymously.
We like Zeffy (no fees), but if you prefer to use PayPal, click here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. PJ says

    September 25, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    Another great reason to come to Bunnell and our beautiful Flagler County. The Flagler Playhouse. I was there and enjoyed a great show, very funny and a superb cast!

  2. mana says

    October 1, 2011 at 6:02 pm

    The show is great!!! Nice night out if you want some laughs!!!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Conner Bosch law attorneys lawyers offices palm coast flagler county
  • grand living realty
  • politis matovina attorneys for justice personal injury law auto truck accidents

Primary Sidebar

  • grand living realty
  • politis matovina attorneys for justice personal injury law auto truck accidents

Recent Comments

  • Pierre Tristam on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, May 7, 2025
  • Sparks on Sheriff Staly Cautions Palm Coast Mayor Norris on Mystery Claims: ‘We Just Don’t Go on Witch Hunts and Innuendoes’
  • Tird of it on Quid Pro Quoi? Mayor Norris Flips Against Discussing Incendiary Accusation About Mystery Developer 
  • JimboXYZ on Sheriff Staly Cautions Palm Coast Mayor Norris on Mystery Claims: ‘We Just Don’t Go on Witch Hunts and Innuendoes’
  • Lucas Paris on Broadband Company’s Contractor Severs Flagler Beach’s Main Water Line on SR100, Cutting Off City’s Supply
  • Ed P on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, May 7, 2025
  • David W Ferguson on Sheriff Staly Cautions Palm Coast Mayor Norris on Mystery Claims: ‘We Just Don’t Go on Witch Hunts and Innuendoes’
  • JimboXYZ on Broadband Company’s Contractor Severs Flagler Beach’s Main Water Line on SR100, Cutting Off City’s Supply
  • Ray W, on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, May 7, 2025
  • Ray W, on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, May 7, 2025
  • Jim on Sheriff Staly Cautions Palm Coast Mayor Norris on Mystery Claims: ‘We Just Don’t Go on Witch Hunts and Innuendoes’
  • Tadpole on Broadband Company’s Contractor Severs Flagler Beach’s Main Water Line on SR100, Cutting Off City’s Supply
  • BillC on The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Tuesday, May 6, 2025
  • MeTv on Sheriff Staly Cautions Palm Coast Mayor Norris on Mystery Claims: ‘We Just Don’t Go on Witch Hunts and Innuendoes’
  • FlaPharmTech on Broadband Company’s Contractor Severs Flagler Beach’s Main Water Line on SR100, Cutting Off City’s Supply
  • DoubleGator on U.S. Rep. Randy Fine Picks Ex-Palm Coast Councilman Ed Danko as District Director in Flagler, St. Johns and Volusia

Log in