Playwright: Rachel Sheinkin; Songwriter: William Finn. At: Theatre at the Center, 1040 Ridge Rd., Munster, Ind. Tickets: 219-836-3255 or www.theatreatthecenter.com; $38-$42. Runs through: Aug. 18
Those quirky adolescent spellers of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are back, and this time they're ideating their tricky words at the Theatre at the Center in Munster, Ind.
Now if you're familiar with this Northwest Indiana theater, you're right in thinking that it's a tad spread out for this intimate two-time Tony Award-winning musical from 2005. For instance, two of the previous times that this clever musical comedy played the Chicago area were in smaller venues like in 2006 at the renamed Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place (featuring the original Broadway direction of James Lapine) or in 2010 at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, Ill.
So in director David Perkovich's production, some of the smaller comedic bits can get swallowed up when played out on such a large canvas. The clever material by composer William Finn (Falsettos) and playwright Rachel Sheinkin (Striking 12) still is effective and fun, but the comedy focus on certain bits gets dissipated.
And based upon the opening night performance, the people tasked with finding audience members to make up the four guest spellers on stage might want to find more milquetoast people. Now you can't entirely control how the improvisational aspect of the show, which is one of its built-in hallmarks, but the feistiness and comedic jibes from some of the selected guest spellers pulled focus. The cast also should memorize the exact stage exit for each of those guest spellers so they can easily get back to their correct seating area.
But aside from these venue and improv casting hiccups, Spelling Bee is largely solid at Theatre at the Center.
Nicole Miller as the parentally neglected Olive Ostrovsky tugged all the right heartstrings, while Landree Fleming was fun as the lisping Logainne Schwartzandgrubenniere, whose two gay dads (doubled up by Bear Bellinger who also plays the defiant "comfort counselor" Mitch Mahoney and Patrick Tierney who also plays the spacey home-schooled contestant Leaf Coneybear) pressure her to succeed.
Cory Goodrich's lovely soprano voice soared in the ensemble numbers as the spelling judge Rona Lisa Perretti, working well with the vice principal Douglas Panch of Jake Mahler (who could have been a bit more tightly wound).
There was also solid work from the spelling contestants of Rose Le Tran as overachieving Marcy Park, Jonathan Wagner as William Barfeé with the magic spelling foot and Frank J. Paul as the upstanding Chip Tolentino (though the change in his song featuring the word "distraction" in place of "erection" is one sign of prudishness).
So while Theatre at the Center's take on Spelling Bee might not surpass any memories of previous Chicago-area productions, it still gets the essential job done.