Picture: Alex Brenner
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee continues at Forest Theatre at Greenside @ George Street until 23 August 2025.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Coincidentally, it’s the 20th anniversary of Spelling Bee’s opening on Broadway. It ran for three years. This magnificent little production only has three weeks to make its mark, and tonight it did.
This reviewer is tempted to trawl the thesaurus for unspellable adjectives to describe the joy created by this talented young cast of musical theatre master’s degree students from LAMDA, but I’ll keep it simple.
It’s wonderful… they’re wonderful.
Beautifully drawn characters, each fully rounded and inhabiting their own peculiar set of foibles and mannerisms. They speak, sing and dance with such singular clarity and comic precision that the future of musical theatre will be safe in their keeping.
It’s easy to see why Rachel Sheinkin’s book won the Tony. It’s dripping with wit and the cast relish every hilarious syllable. The score and lyrics by William Finn are deliciously fun, complex, quirky and beautifully realised in the orchestrations of musical director Joe Carter.
Director Graham Hubbard knows exactly what he’s doing and keeps the pace and the pathos under control. It would be so easy for a cast of young adults playing teenage nerdy kids to do too much, but they never do. This is a company of disciplined comedians serving the story and reaping the rewards from the cheering crowd.
There are four casts rotating nightly, making sure that each performer has their moment in the spotlight. I saw the Nectar cast, but I imagine the other three versions are every bit as fabulous as this one.
Lengthy for the Fringe at an hour and three quarters, it’s a joyous delight from start to finish.
Steven Wren
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