25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in Sydney - a Theatre Review
June 14th 2007 03:44
Christen O'Leary, Lisa McCune, Marina Prior and Magda Szubanski
Unusual title!
Now interest in this show, a musical comedy, is not to be won easily, as was found when the show opened on Broadway, where it struggled to win an audience until a few Tony wins helped word of its brilliance to spread.
In Australia we do not like musicals. Sad but true. So when we have an unusual new musical comedy to show off, but fear that no one will have heard of it, we stick in some TV celebrities and hope this drags in the crowds.
This was how the Melbourne Theatre Company marketed their inaugral production of the show in 2006, and it won them the Helpman Award for Best New Musical. So naturally when the show came North to Sydney the same formula had to be followed - only with Gold Logie winner Lisa McCune thrown in for good measure.
The show opened this Monday and, even regardless of the fact that I knew nothing about the show, I toddled down to Walsh Bay for a look.
Lisa McCune as Maria in The Sound of Music (1999)
Reading the program beforehand was somewhat telling. When you read that the Broadway creators of the show hated the Australian adaptation - but that naturally the Australian creative team had soldiered on, backs to the wall, chin up, big smile, stout fella - you can't help but have a surge of local pride. Of course said swelling of the pride glands can't help but make you believe that you're about to witness cutting edge theatre resulting in the greatest incarnation of the show at hand EVER!
Thus you enter the theatre, ready and willing to be entertained.
Only in the case of this show more often than not you are disappointed and bored!
25th Annual Putnam County Seplling Bee is the story, suprise suprise, of a spelling bee! The various student competitors (twelve year olds) are played by adults, and naturally these dimunitive characters represent almost every typecast in the book from the chubby social outcast, to the bespectacled nerd, to the gangly giggler, to the super-smart Asian prodigy.
The effect coulda shoulda woulda been funnier that it eventually turned out to be.
The show relies a great deal on improvisation - and this the cast handles well enough, churning out any number of tacky jokes de jour about Paris Hilton, George Bush and Lindsay Lohan.
Marina Prior in The Merry Widow
This is not the shows greatest flaw. Rather it is the failure of the book to coherently blend with even so much as an attempt at ease and grace into the score. Production numbers just pop up mechanically after regulated intervals, like the writers went through their show with a stop watch and placed their numbers at even intervals.
However, the Broadway creators are not solely to blame here. The shows choreography is slip shod, the dancing near to non-existant! Even the singing is lacking here, as the cast seem to believe that in order to be convincing as children they must slap on thick nasal accents - ending up sounding more like charicatures than I think was ever intended.
Magda Szubanski, as a boy who must spell out all his words with his feet before he does so verbally, is showstoppingly, side splittingly funny, as is Christen O'Leary as the little girl with two fathers - though somewhat cheesy in the case of the latter.
Marina Prior is woefully underused! One of Australia's greatest songsters is given one showstopper, a ballad that begins without warning and ends when Ms Prior returns to her seat - the most woeful example of choreography in the entire mess... um show. Otherwise Prior's deliciously naughty Spelling Bee host is quite a scream - irreverent, ingratiating and irritating to the extreme and overall quite well played.
The biggest disappointment of the night to my shock and awe was easily Lisa McCune. Admitedly I am at fault for entering the theatre with pre-conceived notions, but I couldn't help but feel a little cheated as the night wore on. McCune's character, a gawkish, giggly little slip of girl is meant to be funny and charming, but just ends up being repetitive and irritating in the extreme. Now this we could have forgiven her for if she had any showstoppers at all.
She didn't.
Magda Szubanski - the comic genius of a million and one faces
Gone was the powerhouse performer seen in years past in Urinetown and Cabaret and gone was the zest and joie de vivre seen in McCune's infectious performances in A Little Night Music and The Sound of Music. Or rather if McCune's performance in Spelling Bee is infectious... it's not in a good way.
Given what has been seen of McCune in musical theatre in the past it can only be concluded that, as she can do no wrong, she has been hideously miscast and needs to find herself a proper musical. Wicked opens in Melbourne in 2008. Perhaps she would be up for the co-female lead Glinda? If not, I'm thinking a revival of Evita.
In the meantime, go and see the Spelling Bee if you have a night off and are at a loose end, but make no special effort. With a brilliant production of Merrily We Roll Along opening at the Seymour Centre last night, Keating the Opera opening next Wednesday at Belvoir, and Kookaburra productions staging of Stephen Sondheim's Company (starring David Campbell, Tamsin Carroll and Katrine Retallick) opening Monday, June 25, Spelling Bee is about to become easily the worst show in town!
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