ESspellingbee

//The 25////th// //Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee// performed by the University Theatre was an excellent production of a musical that I have heard very good things about. I was thoroughly entertained by the whole production and I would love to see it done on a professional level.

Pros:
 * 1)   The first thing that I thought was great about this production was the music. Normally I am not a fan of musicals, but every musical number was fantastic and very well done. The singers were excellent and I really enjoyed listening to the music. I liked how each main character had a solo, each one just as good as the next. Each number was funny and entertaining. Olive Ostrovky's solo particularly struck me because I thought her voice was beautiful and her solo was moving. Every character had a very good voice and was well-suited to sing their pieces. All of the women had very nice voices and sung on key throughout the entire performance. Sometimes musicals can seem very tedious to me because the action is so frequently interrupted by song, but I think that each musical number was well-placed and only added to the production. This musical has made me want to give other musicals a try because of how much I loved the musical pieces.
 * 2)   The second element of the play that I thought was great were the actors that played the children's parts. Although every actor did a very good job, the spellers were especially good for many reasons. First, they did a great job of imitating the speech of children, even if those speech ticks might not necessarily be true-to-life. Each character had a distinct voice for their character, and they were all very good and stayed in character the whole time. Second, the actors did well with pretending to be children. For adults to be playing the parts of children is sometimes very difficult, but I believe these actors pulled it off well. They had every element of childhood covered, from the movements to the attitudes. I really enjoyed watching the spellers because the actors were so good.
 * 3)   I really enjoyed all of the humor in the play. Humor was incorporated at all the right moments, and I loved that humor was included in the musical pieces as well. Every line was delivered with the right comedic timing and tone, which are both very important to making a comedy work. I thought that each character had hilarious parts and they were all well delivered. Sometimes comedy can be hit or miss, but I think all of it was in good taste (maybe with the exception of one particular musical number, ahem) and I laughed throughout the entire play.
 * 4)   The set for the play was really phenomenal and it worked very well with the characters' parts and the set up of the scene. Nothing looked out of place or random and there were not any pieces that did not belong there. Each set piece was functional and collaborated well on stage. I particularly like the bleachers that were turned around to become the back drop for Olive's mother's Indian ashram. This was a very creative and innovative idea that came together very nicely. The set up on stage was good because all the actors were visible and could be heard well.
 * 5)   Finally, I thought the costumes were great. Each character's costume told something about his or her personality, which is what actor's costumes are supposed to do. They looked very authentic and the actors appeared to be comfortable moving around in them, which is a very important aspect of the play. If the actors look uncomfortable, then I feel uncomfortable watching them. I particularly liked Logainne's costume because it portrayed her juvenileness and her bubbly personality so well. Every costume was unique and very distinguishable, allowing the actors to develop their own character which was well-complemented by the costumes.

Cons:
 * 1)   The play was very long (about 2 hours) which I didn't mind, but there was no intermission. In such a long play, I believe there shold always be some kind of break to give the audience time to relax from all the excitement, go to the bathroom, or do anything else without having to miss some of the play. Because the play was so good, I would not have wanted to get out of my seat and miss any of it, so there should have been at least a 5 to 10 minute intermission. Surely the play could have been divided into 2 acts without messing up the sequence of events or interrupting any major action, but instead they chose not to and people like me were left anticipating a break that never came.
 * 2)   I was very confused by the 4 “random” people that were pulled out of the audience to participate in the spelling bee. The people seemed to be very calm and collected up on stage, something that is not normal for people who did not previously know they were to be pulled up on stage. One of the girls who was pulled up on stage was sitting by me for the first half of the play before she got up, and it seemed like she knew it was coming. Afterwards she didn't even stay for the rest of the play, so I knew that she had to have known she was going to be on stage, which just made me even more confused. I still haven't figured out what the purpose for having those people on stage was, so I think that is one element of the play that definitely could have been left out.
 * 3)   For the lighting, I thought they could have done a better job highlighting the solos of the play with spotlights or something. The lighting was good at certain points, but if there had been spotlights on each character when they did their solo, it would have had a much better dramatic effect and would have kept my attention better focused on the person who was singing. Also, they could have used very bright spotlights on each speller as they came up to spell a word, accentuating the fact that each speller was put on the spot at that exact moment. The lighting could have been used to show the nervousness of the spellers and the nervewracking event that is a spelling bee.
 * 4)   Although each character was very entertaining and good at their individual parts, I thought some of the stereotypes were rather ridiculous for the characters. I know that the characters were supposed to be exaggerated, but they could have made the characters exaggerated without using obvious stereotypes that are overused and very cliché. For example, the fact that Mitch Mahoney was a black man doing community service could be an offensive steroetype to some people. He was portrayed as a typical black “gangster” type that is not necessarily politically correct.
 * 5)   One last thing that I didn't particularly like about the show was the projectile candy that was thrown out to the crowd. Although this seems like a fantastic idea, I got hit by a fiercely thrown Tootsie Roll that was very unwelcome. I was caught off guard by the candy being hurled at my face and proceeded to get pelted by that small chocolate chew. I'm all about free stuff, but not when it is violently thrown at me (no matter how innocently) by people who are supposed to be making my theater experience a good one. But other than this small attack on my face, I thought the musical was overall very good and deserves two thumbs up from me.