Bees in their bonnets: Spelling musical launches IRT season

Your word is "sconce." Spell "sconce."

Past master Rona Lisa Peretti supervises the bee.

May I have a definition, please?

A bracket candlestick or group of candlesticks.

Could you use it in a sentence for me?

On the way up a side aisle after the opening night performance of "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," I rammed my right shoulder into a sconce.

Sconce, s-c-o-n-c-e.

That's a real-life example generated from my exit experience Friday night at Indiana Repertory Theatre. Fortunately, the hurt didn't last long, vanishing overnight. My weekend bit of doubles tennis wasn't notably affected today, being about as chockfull of errors as usual. From now, on, I will be more careful watching things attached to walls I move next to. 

In the actual event recalled in my example of a spelling-bee sentence, two aspects of the hazards I ran into long ago on the classroom spelling-bee level occur to me. One is the dumb-bunny risk of confusing it with a similarly spelled word that doesn't sound the same, and spelling "scone," leaving out the second "c" from a surplus of nervousness. The other is the hazard, if the word is unfamiliar, of wondering which identical sequence of letters to choose from the options that pop up in the mind. Did the word presented follow the example of "once" or of "response"? Should I end my attempt with "ce" or "se"?

Though my developing literacy as a kid took a direction that included being a good speller, I never nurtured much interest in spelling bees— as either a participant or a follower. The distinction they conferred upon many much more adept spellers than I never excited either envy or fan spirit in me as spelling-bee championship became an annual news item.

In the stage musical created by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin from Rebecca Feldman's concept, the intense competition of master teenage spellers is treated to an opportunity for character revelation as well as the process of elimination through which the.competition proceeds. There are eccentric, personalized tricks of preparation, such as William Barfee's "magic foot,"  a choreographed tapping that establishes and confirms his every confident decision. That was an essential part of the idiosyncrasies displayed in Brett Mutter's splendid performance on opening night.

Directed and choreographed by Patdro Harris, the cast maximized the individuality of the participants. If these highly focused kids had in common their orthographic supremacy among their Putnam County peers, they also displayed quirks about family, relationships, and identity that the actors illuminated throughout the two-act show. Besides Mutter, portrayals of the distinctively named participants were capably discharged by Matheus Barbee, Ayana Strutz, Devan Mathias, Dominique Lawson, and Ariana D. Burks. There were also three volunteer spellers from the audience who were destined to be eliminated from competition along the way. They blended in thoroughly: thespian sconces that no one would bump into. 

Under her competitors' watchful eyes, one visualizes the word on her wrist. 

The cast was filled out by three other actors in grown-up roles, two of them conflicted in peculiar ways: Ryan Artzberger as the bitter vice principal Douglas Panch and R.J. Griffith as feisty "comfort counselor" Mitch Mahoney. The third was the officious supervisor of the event, Rona Lisa Peretti, smoothly played by Michelle Lauto. 

A cameo appearance by Ben Asaykwee as Jesus Christ must be seen to be believed.

The songs were both lively and poignant, as required by the show's dramatic curve. "Pandemonium" was the initial ensemble explosion, allowing the cast and the band (led by Joshua Burniece) to go all-out. As the show proceeded, the band was sometimes revealed and nearly foregrounded on its moving stage, so that performance unity became uppermost. 

This seemed a hallmark of Harris' direction of the main characters as well. The show's inclination toward caricature was checked by the ensemble richness in both movement and vocal interaction. The synthesis worked insofar as the audience involvement was galvanic on opening night; that enthusiasm will likely continue through Oct. 13.

Special mention must go to Zach Rosing's brilliant video designs, projected and ever-changing on the show's unique representation of a high-school gym's scoreboard. The array of overhead images confirmed the overall impression that in such a thoroughly designed production, there would always be something to look at as well as to listen to.

And that's likely to spell success for the start of IRT's 2024-25 season.

[Photos by Zach Rosing]