The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The setup is simple. Six overcompetitive kids, all played by adults, battle it out in a spelling bee run by a handful of equally quirky grown-ups.

The staging leans right into that simplicity. It's built to look like a spelling bee held in a middle school gym, and the show makes clever use of the whole space to stand in for different spots. That includes the aisles and stairways where the audience sits, which pulls you further into it. They also break the fourth wall, bringing real audience members up on stage as spellers and speaking directly to the crowd. The whole thing is designed to make you forget you're watching a production at all. You're watching an actual spelling bee.

The four audience volunteers drawn from the crowd were a big part of that. They weren't just handed words to spell. They got pulled into the choreography and the dancing right along with the cast. It's a small thing, but it makes you cheer each one on, and it connects you to a fellow audience member more than you'd expect.

Mix in the humour, the upbeat choreography, and some strong singing, and there's never a dull moment. The energy and the action barely let up. Some of the comedy is a little childish and leans into slapstick, but here that works in its favour. It fits right into the world of a middle school spelling bee.

For all the comedy, though, each character is quietly carrying something. On the outside they share one thing, a love of spelling, but the show gives you a peek into each of their lives. Olive is lonely, with a mother away in India and a workaholic father who is always running late. William has peanut allergies and a real insecurity about how people keep mispronouncing his name. Logainne buckles under the pressure of two overbearing fathers. Marcy is worn out from being the perfect child who has to be the best at everything. Leaf comes from a big family that keeps reminding him he isn't the smart one. Chip is socially awkward and stuck in the worst of puberty.

That's what makes "Why We Like Spelling" land the way it does. The singing is great, but it's the lyrics that stuck with me. The song lays out how these kids are the outcasts, the ones who get picked on, and how spelling is the one place they get to feel normal instead of strange. It's a genuinely good message wrapped inside a fun song. Underneath all their differences, their shared passion for spelling ends up mattering more than what sets them apart, and each of them slowly starts to value themselves beyond it. Spelling is their outlet, and it turns out to be their path to figuring out who they are.