The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
At UMass Theater, a Comedy of spelling errors and six lives lived by the bell
Who doesn’t like a spelling bee? Last night we watched four members of the audience get up on stage with the cast of the comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at UMass’s Rand Theater, for a fun, off-the-wall evening that went well beyond the spelling contest. We got to know these six characters as their lives unfolded during the competition.
The set was simple: ten chairs on risers for the beloved annual spelling bee in Putnam County, with the local vice principal, Douglas Panch (Marco Zavala), holding court at the lectern. We meet Rona Lisa Peretti, the Bee’s moderator and a former childhood spelling champ, clearly in her finest moment as she recounts former winners and cheers on the spellers about to take the challenge.
The play has a fun twist: four audience members join the cast and try their luck at spelling. None of them lasted more than a single word, and soon they joined the failed spellers, marching off stage and removing their nametags to the tune of “losers,” sung derisively by the remaining cast.
Off to the left is Mitch Mahoney (John Misch), a work-release prisoner in charge of security, greeting the failed spellers as they’re escorted off stage. He’s the Comfort Counselor, handing each loser a juice box and some solace. He wants to toughen up these kids, but “it probably violates my parole,’ so he won’t.
The cast’s first big number, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” proved this wasn’t a strong cast of singers, but a few stood out. Tiny Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre (Arke Tobar-Fawley) belted out her solo, “Woe Is Me,” with real strength, cheered on by her two dads, Carl and Dan — another of the emotional tells we get about the group as the play unfolds. Olive Ostrovsky (Abbi Andrews) finds a first crush in fellow contestant William Barfee (Mario Longo-Imbimbo), and faces a challenge coming up with her $25 admission fee. Poor Barfee has his name butchered throughout by the hosts, and his catchphrase, “I know,” follows every correct spelling.
Looking at the set, we thought at first the whole show would be just contestants trying to spell words, but in the second act it became more lively, and the funny lines the VP used when he threw out the words got lots of laughs. At one point, the whole process slows to slow motion as the words are comically stretched out and the actors move as if they’ve been slowed down.
The story of the show is fascinating. It began as C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, an improvised play about a spelling bee created by Rebecca Feldman, which was workshopped at the nearby Barrington Stage in Great Barrington in 2004, then moved to Broadway in 2005, where it was nominated for six Tony Awards and won two, including Best Book. And the spelling-bee connection is still alive: this past June, Shrey Parikh, the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee winner, guest-spelled in the show’s 20th-anniversary Off-Broadway revival in New York, where Jon Cryer, playing Vice Principal Panch, tried to stump him with “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”
Some of the contestants showed off the various techniques great spellers use to figure out their words. Some use their feet to spell it out on the floor; others pepper the host with questions like “Can you use it in a sentence?” and “Are there alternative meanings?” Some of the funniest lines were the retorts from the beleaguered vice principal as he fulfilled their requests in deadpan delivery.
The song “Pandemonium” had the actors using their chairs as props, and “Magic Foot” was an elegy to the spelling foot explained earlier.
The play’s pace was its strong point: it kept moving fast, the jokes hit, and the characters became people I cared about. One who stood out, not only for his homemade-clothing costume but for his delivery, was Leaf Coneybear (Tijan Camara), who also played a gay father, one of the couple watching little Logainne spell at the tournament. He consistently got laughs with his great timing and boisterous stage presence.
Chip Tolentino (Maxwell Goldberg) was the confident former champion of last year’s Bee. But this time his hormones get the best of him when he spots an attractive audience member, and then he gets the word “tittup” as his word… The bell rings; he’s gone. He’s relegated to selling candy to the audience, and later sings “My Unfortunate Erection,” which the attractive audience member’s fuzzy sweater brought on. Here’s the pattern that brought these kids into focus: each song is tied to the thing that trips them up. And kudos to UMass for leaving the boner scene in, as some school productions have decided to remove it.
The sixth speller, Marcy Park (Rosalia Rivera), the show’s resident overachiever who speaks six languages, works two jobs, and rounds out the group. Rivera is a dominating actress who owns the stage when she is singing or delivering sharp lines without a smile. Her scenes were tight, and she sang about herself in her bright rendition of “I Speak 6 Languages,” a call for help as well as a humble brag.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, UMass Rand Theater, continues Oct. 31 at 2 p.m., Nov. 4 at 10 a.m., and Nov. 5, 6 and 7 at 7:30 p.m., with a Nov. 7 matinee at 2 p.m. Tickets: Recommended for ages 13 and up. Valley veteran Gina Kaufmann directed the cast of UMass theater majors, with theater major Eliza Epstein as dramaturg. Music and lyrics by William Finn; book by Rachel Sheinkin.