Theater Thursday - 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

We were given free tickets to the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee for review purposes. Any and all opinions expressed here are our own.

What: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Where: Kelsey Theatre
             1200 Old Trenton Rd.
             West Windsor, NJ

Who:Recommended for Ages 13 and Up

When: Friday June 14, 8:00 PM
            Saturday June 15 8:00 PM
            Sunday June 16, 2:00 PM

Me - The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was a good show. It was very funny! The characters were hilarious! I didn't have a favorite because they were all so funny. The show was very original. I had never seen it before, and I have never seen anything else like it. I liked the songs too. They didn't really stick in my head but I enjoyed them. The acting was really good. Everyone in the show was really good. The singing was okay. They were not all necessarily the best singers but the songs were good. Some of the singing was really good though. The woman who played the character of Rona Lisa Perreti had a really nice voice. They did a good job with the set. It really looked like a high school gym. Some of the costumes were crazy, but they worked for the show. It was a very entertaining show.

Mom - The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a very funny show full of amusing characters. Although, I had previously seen it on Broadway, I had forgotten how fun the show actually is. Obviously, as the name indicates, the plot of the show does revolve around a spelling bee, however,  even though this sounds like very tame subject matter, just be warned that this is not a good show for young children. There is some subject matter in the show that is very inppropriate  especially one particular song. If you look in the playbill, you will not be able to find the song by title, but if you look it up on wikipedia the song is also mentioned by a different name which makes it very clear what the subject is. The acting in this production of the show is terrific. Although most of the performers are past high school age, they really do a good job of inhabiting their characters and are very believable in their roles. Over all, the singing voices are not as good as the acting with the exception of Cindy Chait who plays Rona Lisa Perreti and has a lovely voice. However, the actors do a good job of putting across the songs and most of the songs are so hilarious that you don't even think about the singing voices. All in all,  it's a very entertaining production and definitely worth seeing.

And that's our view. Tune in Saturday for another installment of our Working in Theater series in this week's Saturday Special.