[NEohioPAL] Review of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” at the Cleveland Play House

[Bob Abelman]

‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ is how the CPH spells hilarity



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, American Theatre Critics Association



Recently, the 90th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee was given more than 15 hours of live coverage on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and the ESPN app. 



More than a million people tuned in for the final round, where 12-year-old Ananya Vinay of Fresno, California, won by spelling "marocain," a French word for a type of dress fabric, after plugging through “gifblaar,” “wayzgoose,” “tschefuncte” “gesith” and “cecidomyia.”  



The national audience no doubt consisted of people devoted to the high-stakes competition of juvenile o-r-t-h-o-g-r-a-p-h-y (the art and science of spelling) and drawn to the thrill of learning new words, their definitions, their alternate meanings, and their lands of origin.  



But there’s probably a little s-c-h-a-d-e-n-f-r-e-u-d-e (the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others) at play as well when watching physically, socially and emotionally awkward pre-adolescents fighting low-blood sugar, sleep deprivation and all sorts of internal demons during this survival-of-the-smartest pressure cooker.  



And there’s plenty of melodrama in the stalling tactic of “can you use it in a sentence” and from the departure of a fallen contestant after the dreaded D-sharp peal of the bell signifies a critical misstep.  



All this and more is replicated in the 2005 Tony Award-winning parody “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
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