NWspellingbee

The show “Spelling Bee” was a very funny and well done show about colorful spelling bee participants. The play was about each one of the contestants, their lives, and their performance at the bee. The good things were as follows

1. The comedy was very well done. It was witty and the audience laughed along openly. The definitions of the words, as well as the sentences they used them in were very funny. In the beginning, the stage was set for a funny performance by the woman in charge. She relived her spelling bee win in typical pageant queen style and she was hilarious. The dialogue was very well written and mostly appropriate, which was refreshing. 2. The characters were very distinct. I loved how each character had a signature technique to spelling the words. This helped the audience keep the characters straight. For example: one character spelled words with his foot, one character whispered into her hand, and another character wrote the word out on her arm. Not only did this build up the characters personalities but it gave the audience means to distinguish them. 3. The costumes added great depth and personality to the characters. For example, Olives costume was outdate and very modest which worked well with her shy mousy personality. It showed that she was not as well off as the other characters and that she was used to not being the center of attention. The younger girls costume helped create her age. With bright colors and glitter and fancy patterns, she looked young and disorganized. The prim and proper girls costume was very put together and not a hair was out of place, showing her perfectionist personality. All the characters wore costumes that highlighted their key features. 4. The set was very believable. It looked like a real school gymnasium. The bleachers resembled that of a real gym and the basketball hoops and other gym equipment added to the scene. The believable set added to the legitimacy of the play because I felt like I was actually there watching the spelling bee in a real school, not in a theater. 5. The portrayal of time passing. When they were walking in the circle and saying parts of the words it was a very visual and appealing portrayal of time passing. It would have gotten boring if they had gone word by word through the whole bee, but they used the blocking and lighting to show the day drag on.

The performance, however, did have its flaws.

1. Bringing random people from the audience on stage was confusing. I couldn’t tell if they were “in on it” or not. I didn’t like feeling like I wasn’t in the know. They never explained why of how they chose the people and questions about who those people were remained in the back of my mind throughout the play. It was a distraction because I felt like I should have known that the people were or were not part of the play. 2. Though I liked most of the costumes, I didn’t like the prep school boy characters costume. From the beginning, I thought he resembled an adult and he didn’t fit in with the other young looking characters. I remember wondering why there was an adult participating in the children’s spelling bee and I thought it was just for comedic effect until it became obvious he had a crush on one of the other characters. Then I was quite confused and I had to reassess the character and his costume to realize that he was actually a young boy. 3. I didn’t like how the baseball player threw candy into the audience. It was a distraction to the play and I feel like it didn’t really match up with the flow of the show. It was as if we suddenly went from being just in the audience to being actively involved and I didn’t like how the random scene disrupted the continuity. 4. I also didn’t particularly like how they portrayed religion in the scene with black Jesus and the girl praying. While I didn’t find it offensive at all, I could definitely see how some people might. It seemed like they were poking fun at religion and prayer by making it so funny. Some people take it very seriously and I feel that when putting on a production for such a diverse campus, religious sensitivity must be observed. 5. Finally, it was hard to understand the young girl with the lisp. She did a good job staying in character and keeping her lisp, but it sounded fake and forced to me. She was hard to understand and I believe many of her funny lines might have gotten lost because she focused more on perfecting her imperfection then actually delivering the line.