Theatre VCU’s lastest Mainstage spell-binding

Michael Todd
Staff Writer

Friday evening, VCU theater students spelled their way to what promises to be another successful production with the opening weekend of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.The spelling bee is a one act musical that brings together a hodge podge of inherently hilarious characters spanning the entire spectrum of nerdy or otherwise abnormal.The Singleton Center theater became the auditorium in which the spelling bee took place, with audience interaction that included vigorous clapping when characters spelled words correctly, and polite clapping when the ring of a bell signaled a misspelt word and, consequently, the speller’s removal from the bee.

Audience members became so involved, in fact, that they were randomly selected to join the cast on stage as fellow competitors at the beginning of the bee, with these volunteers selected from a list signed at the theater entrance. Throughout the course of the show, as they misspelled words and were eliminated, these members slowly returned to the audience. One older gentleman, however, after shocking the judges with the correct spelling of an apparently difficult word, was asked to spell a second word in order to return him to his seat and keep him from presumably winning the bee, much to the delight of the audience.

Each time a competitor was eliminated, the cast sang a special goodbye song, and the loser received a hug and juice box from Mitch Mahoney (Brandon Rashad Butts), the care counselor who was serving his parole through the bee, casually dressed in black jeans, a leather jacket and styling shades.

The show was directed by now-retired Gary C. Hopper, former director of Undergraduate Studies at Theatre VCU. Multiple students describe working with Hopper as feeling like they were treated as professionals as opposed to students.

“He came in every single day with this energy,” said Maxwell Moore, whose character “Barf” is an antisocial speller with a rare mucous membrane disorder and the ability to spell words out on the floor with the assistance of his magic foot. “And even on the days when I wasn’t feeling it and I didn’t want to do it … you come in and you see Gary, and you’re right there with him. He just has one of those personalities.”

Additionally, the theatre department brought in vocal coach Rachel Hillmer to help the cast with character voices during both song and regular speech.

“This is my first musical I’ve ever been in, and it was an awesome experience, and I really want to do more,” Maxwell said of the experience. “But VCU usually has a really good balance of alternating musicals and plays, and I think that’s a really good thing for the department.”

According to cast members, Hillmer’s favorite phrase during the rehearsal process was “annoy me with your diction,” which became rather confusing and hilarious in itself considering that “diction” was often jokingly misheard as the first name of cast member Dixon Cashwell, who plays Leaf Coneybear.

“It’s a bit of a tough show to sing. I remember going in and thinking, I’ve listened to these songs before, they’re fairly easy; but no, no, no,” said Moore. “Our music director was really great; I’d never done anything like this before, and she really brought me up to speed really fast.”

Besides the actual spelling, Putnam offers audiences songs about same sex parents and unfortunate erections, religious experiences featuring an Asian Jesus and maybe a couple life lessons buried underneath the topmost layers of humor.

“One of the themes we went for was self-validation,” said Erin Adelman, who plays Catholic schoolgirl and preteen prodigy Marcy Park, speaking of the plays underlying themes and each character’s journey. “(My character) discovers that she doesn’t need to be perfect; Coneybear realizes he really is smart.”

For instance, up until the spelling bee, words were the closest companions for both characters Barf and Olive Ostrovsky, described as an “innocent, pure little girl who only sees the good in people” by Maggie Horan. But by the end of the bee, they are able to establish a friendship via their mutual love of spelling.

“She kind of has a hard home life but hides that behind a mask of happiness,” Horan said of Olive, who perhaps pulls the most heartstrings of any other character in the show. “She definitely came out of it stronger. Her home life is still uncertain, but she’s made a friend, which is huge for her because she has never had any friends.”

Despite the childish connotations of the musical’s title and subject matter, VCU students and other potential viewers should not fear that the content is predictably juvenile or uninteresting. In fact, due to the presence of some strong language and other mature content, the show may warrant a higher rating than would correlate with the ages of the characters involved.

“I think people hear the title of the show and automatically think it’s for kids,” said Adelman. “But it’s not a kid’s show at all – it’s very adult humor.” CT

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will run April 12-14 – 7:30 p.m. • April 15 – 3 p.m. • April 19-21 – 7:30 p.m. • April 22 – 3 p.m., High School Matinees, April – 17, 18–10 a.m.