It's been 20 years since William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee opened at Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre (currently home to Bobby Darin biomusical Just in Time), kicking off a Tony-nominated run that lasted for 1,136 performances and 21 previews.
The musical, which features songs by the late Finn and a Tony-winning book by Sheinkin, began as an improvisational play by Rebecca Feldman titled C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, centering on a school spelling bee at the fictional Putnam Valley Middle School. Finn happened to see it on the recommendation of his friend, Pulitzer-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, whose nanny at the time, Sarah Saltzberg, was in the cast. Finn decided to musicalize the show with Sheinkin, and Saltzberg became the only cast member to continue with the project from its earliest origins all the way to its Broadway debut.
A premiere came via Barrington Stage Company, which workshopped and developed the musical in 2004, with James Lapine directing and Dan Knechtges choreographing. The musical moved to Off-Broadway's Second Stage in 2005, winning the top prize of Outstanding Musical at the Lucille Lortel Awards. On the strength of that showing, the show made a late-season move to Broadway, opening May 2, 2005. The show became an immediate critical and audience hit, thanks to its tuneful score and laugh-out-loud book.
The show features a band of misfit tween spellers, played by, along with Saltzman, Jose Llana, Dan Fogler, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Deborah S. Craig. And then there was Vice Principal Douglas Panch, played by Jay Reiss; moderator Rona Lisa Peretti, played by Lisa Howard; and comfort counselor Mitch Mahoney, played by Derrick Baskin. Only Llana and Ferguson weren't making their Broadway debuts with the production, and for many it launched careers that have gone on to include starring TV and film roles, along with lots more Broadway appearances. Fogler, one of the actors propelled to Hollywood success from the musical, won a Tony Award for his performance, too.
But that wasn't actually the full slate of spellers at performances. At each performance, three audience members were selected to join the spellers onstage and compete during the performance, making each performance of the musical somewhat unique. The production even invited celebrity guest spellers frequently throughout the run, with Mary Poppins star Julie Andrews famously being given the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious鈥攁nd getting it wrong! Sheinkin's book is constructed so that Reiss as Panch had various options for the words being given to the audience spellers, with easy words if they intended the speller to remain onstage, and ridiculously tough words if it was time for them to get out and go sit back down.
Whether an audience speller is up or one of the characters, much of the show's comedy comes from Panch's hilarious replies when the spellers ask for their word to be used in a sentence. When one speller is given "phylactery," which is either of two small square leather boxes containing religious texts traditionally worn on the left arm and head by Jewish men during morning weekday prayers, Panch's example sentence is "Billy, put down that phylactery鈥攚e're Episcopalian!" Cue the laughs.
There was also a very interesting instance of kismet within this musical's original casting. Keenan-Bolger had developed and starred in the pre-Broadway productions of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' The Light in the Piazza in 2003 and 2004. When that musical got to Broadway in April 2005, Keenan-Bolger had been replaced in her role鈥攁 devastating blow. The Broadway bow for Spelling Bee wasn't in the cards until after that happened, and that ended up clearing the way for Keenan-Bolger to make her Broadway debut after all in the very same season鈥�and she was Tony-nominated for her performance alongside the actor who replaced her in Piazza, Kelli O'Hara. (Don't worry鈥攖he actors are close friends now.) Obviously, it ended up working out for both. Keenan-Bolger and O'Hara are both Tony winners, the former for her 2019 performance in To Kill a Mockingbird and the latter for her 2015 performance in The King and I.
This truly belly laugh鈥搃nducing musical has become a favorite worldwide, with regional theatres and schools producing it often. Just last year, Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center staged a starry revival, boasting a cast that included Beanie Feldstein, Alex Joseph Grayson, Noah Galvin, Bonnie Milligan, Philippe Arroyo, Taran Killam, Kevin McHale, Nina White, and Anna Zavelson. The show hasn't made a Broadway return yet, but suffice it to say, we are r-e-a-d-y for it.
Take a look back at the original Broadway production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in the gallery below.
