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Schools

Sachem North's 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Deserves "A"

With audience participation, musical comedy is a riot.

An exuberant performance of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was performed by the Sachem North Drama Club on Friday and Saturday Nights.

Directed and staged by Sachem North teacher Jonathan Chiaramonte, it was created by a New York based improvisational comedy troupe.  The concept was conceived by Rebecca Feldman, who never fully healed from misspelling the word bruise in a grade-school bee.

The musical, which hit Broadway in 2005, not long after it was created, never strayed entirely from its off-the-cuff roots.  Four audience members are chosen at random to participate in the bee as contestants in minor roles, effectively bulldozing the "fourth wall."  This unique element elicited some of the most spontaneous and sidesplitting moments.

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The show started with Rona Lisa Peretti, who would be officiating at the bee.  As she entered the gymnasium to set up, she had a flashback to the moment when she won the third-annual spelling bee by correctly spelling Syzygy, which we learn from Peretti — the top realtor in Putnam County played by a power suit wearing, no nonsense Victoria Isernia  — means when the Earth aligns with the moon and the sun.  Throughout all her future achievements she never forgot that seminal success; as each successive spelling bee champion is crowned Queen or King Bee, she relives her own moment in the sun.

Peretti was joined by Vice Principal Douglas Panch, the official word reader, played with just the right amount of subtle, underlying insanity by Paul Gagliardi. Peretti informs that Panch has had to step in at the last minute for the usual word reader, Sachem North Principal, , who is at a Justin Bieber concert.

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The genius of this malleable production, which takes place in the geographically ambiguous Putnam County, is that lines can easily be tweaked to fit in with the specific area and zeitgeist of the times, while core themes of the awkwardness of adolescence, feeling like an outsider, the drive to be the best and parental problems remain largely the same.

Mitch Mahoney, the official comfort counselor and an ex-convict performing his community service by handing out a hug and a juice box to the losing contestants as they are whisked away, was played by an audacious Grant Lindeman, as an Eminem wannabe in baggy jeans.  His singing evoked the over-the-top performance of an American Idol contestant, complete with Mariah Carey like hand gestures.

Then there was Olive Ostrovsky played by Marissa Girgus, she took the bus to the competition, alone, while her father was working late and her mother is on an extended quest for spiritual enlightenment in an ashram in India.  Adorably bashful in pigtails and overalls she was utterly endearing as she sang "I Love My Dictionary."  The lonely etymology expert declared, "The words in my dictionary are the friends I'll have forever."

The character William Barfee (It's pronounced Bar-fay) has only one working nostril, and a "famous magic foot," which made for some impressive dance moves from the surprisingly light on his feet James Stumper.

Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre was portrayed by a delightfully sweet Sarah Liberti . She has a speech impediment and two overbearing homosexual fathers.

Marcy Parks, played by the sensational singer and dancer Laura Laureano, is the classic overachiever and delivers one of the most memorable lines. 

"I sleep three hours a night, I hide in the bathroom cabinet and I'm not allowed to cry," she said illustrating the high price of always being the best at everything; followed by a show-stopping rendition of "I Speak Six Languages."

Leaf Coneybear, the underdog in the contest was acted with a melange of fragility and an indomitable spirit as portrayed by Taylor Newsom.  He comes from a family of former hippies, who think he's not that smart, and got to go to the bee when the winner and first-runner up in his district couldn't make it.

Matt Pedersen played Chip Tolentino with bravery and zest as he finds puberty hitting him, hard, at the most inopportune time.

In small, but memorable roles, were Logainne's fathers played by Norwegian exchange student Erlend Broholm and Ryan Cavanagh.

The show was part phantasmagoria as characters' imagined scenarios were played out while the set went dark and a single spotlight shone.  One of the most heart-wrenching and cathartic of these was when Olive's absentee parents, played by Isernia and Lindeman, appeared to her in a mirage, singing in a haunting chorus, "I love you.  I love everything about you." This culminated in a spellbinding three-part harmony.

This dream sequence was brought on by her being given the word chimerical, meaning, unreal, imaginary and wildly fanciful; evidencing the thread of synchronicity pervading the performance; alongside the humor which came largely from the quirky, unhelpful sentences that Panch used to put the spelling words into context.  Examples include:  "What happens in the palestra stays in the palestra." (look it up), and "Sally's mother told her it was her cystitis that made her special."

In an epilogue, each character gave a brief history of his or her character after the bee, in which we learn that Logainne becomes Secretary of Education under President Nick Jonas.  This line is often changed to famous figures of the time and "President Barack Obama" was used in a performance in early 2007.

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