A tender, joyous, bittersweet and very, very funny tribute to kids obsessed with words, the Off Broadway revival of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is a perfect salve for an ugly world, the gift we didn’t realize we desperately needed.
William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s musical — which ran on Broadway from 2005 to 2008, under James Lapine’s direction — takes place entirely during its title event. The competition is hosted by a local realtor and past winner, Rona Lisa Peretti (Lilli Cooper, from “Tootsie”), with the cues and clues doled out by Vice Principal Panch (Jason Kravits); the “comfort counselor” is the former personal trainer Mitch Mahoney (Matt Manuel). The fierce contestants are middle schoolers, all played by adult actors.
Sheinkin’s uproarious book (based on a concept by Rebecca Feldman, additional material by Jay Reiss) and Finn’s beautiful songs deftly dispense information about the kids’ personalities and home lives — the integration of script and score in this show could be taught in drama schools as a model of graceful exposition.
We quickly figure out, for example, that the eccentric, gentle Leaf Coneybear (Justin Cooley, who, coincidentally, played a character obsessed with anagrams in “Kimberly Akimbo”) is considered “dumb” by his home-schooling family, but he can enter a trance-like state and morph into a spelling beast. The shy Olive Ostrovsky (Jasmine Amy Rogers, fresh from “Boop! The Musical”) is deprived of her parents’ attention and worries about paying the $25 entrance fee in their absence.
Others are burdened by the pressure of success. The overachieving Marcy Park (Leana Rae Concepcion) breezes through challenges like “qaimaqam” — “a rare exception to the Q-U rule,” she explains — but also sings that “winning is a job from which I get no enjoyment.” As for Chip Tolentino (Philippe Arroyo), he is both boosted and hampered by his incumbent status. That a past triumph can be tough to outlive is illustrated by Ms. Peretti, who still thinks about her own conquest of the word “syzygy” in the contest’s third edition.
As a show, “Spelling Bee” is full of booby traps. Most of the characters are children, for example, and not just any kids but nerdy ones with cute — and potentially grating — quirks. William Barfée (Kevin McHale, best known for playing Artie on “Glee”) visualizes words by tracing them on the floor with a foot; Logainne SchwartzandGrubenierre (Autumn Best), whose last name combines her two fathers’, has a lisp and often ends up with words containing treacherous sibilants. The superlative actors sidestep gooey adorableness and treat the young characters with the love and kindness they deserve while also mining laughs.
Another potential hazard is audience participation, with four preselected theatergoers joining the actors onstage. It is not much of a spoiler to say that they are progressively eliminated thanks to Sheinkin’s devilish plotting devices, which are superbly implemented by Kravits and Cooper. Quickly adapting to various scenarios, the pair smoothly guides the show and deftly avoids pandering to the audience.
The script has changed with the times, and Danny Mefford’s revival nods to its location inside the New World Stages complex (“Have you ever been in a gymnasium next to a production of ‘Heathers’ before?” Logainne asks Leaf). It’s also updated some topical jokes (an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez one sticks its landing). But the glue holding it all together is the score.
Finn, who died in April, had an unerring ability to meld deceivingly straightforward lyrics with melodies that can pierce through any protective armor. The “Falsettos” trilogy is usually acknowledged as his magnum opus, but “Spelling Bee” is just as good. There’s a winning playfulness in many of the numbers, though they also contain traces of darker emotions. Those fully come to the fore in “The I Love You Song,” in which Olive faces her loneliness with her parents (performed by Cooper and Manuel). Lighter than air and grounded in ache, it’s the emotional peak of the show, and very possibly of this fall season.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Through April 12 at New World Stages, Manhattan; spellingbeenyc.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
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