The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

A hilarious musical comedy in Montreal

With shows like Urinetown, Avenue Q, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the Broadway stage has been showing its cynical side. It takes a wickedly satirical mind to produce a play about toilet regulation (Urinetown), and foul-mouthed, porn-loving puppets (Avenue Q), or to parody a rite of childhood, the school spelling bee, and all that goes along with it, the overachieving privileged kids, overbearing parents, and self-important teachers and judges.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee started off as a non-musical improvisational comedy. It eventually morphed into a musical, moving quickly through the off-Broadway stage up to the Great White Way, where it picked up two of the six Tony Awards for which it was nominated. Several touring productions made their way across North America, with smaller, independent productions along the way. And now it’s being produced in Montreal by a theatre company that definitely has the talent, smarts, passion, and the sense of humour to pull it off.

Processed Theatre is a young company, launched in March of 2010. But in that short time they managed to make a splash with their version of Reefer Madness: The Musical, and Edges: A Song Cycle, which they took to the Montreal Fringe Festival earlier this summer. “Our company wants to give Montreal audiences exposure to musicals that are recent and relevant,” says Artistic Director Nichole Carlone. They chose Putnam County “because it's contemporary, clever and combines musical and improvisational theatre.” The show opens just after Labour Day, and if their recent successes are anything to go by, they should have another hit on their hands. It’s got some great tunes, Musical Director Shayne Gryn points out. Probably the most well-known piece to come out of Putnam County is a little ditty called “My Unfortunate Erection,” a lament in which one character blames his, uh, appendage for his defeat in the spelling bee.

Broadway plays over the past several years have embraced principles of postmodernism, and will sometimes break the fourth wall convention, lifting the veil that separates the audience from the action on the stage. Putnam County is no exception. “We are still missing a speller,” one of the teachers announces. Four audience members are selected as “spellers” before the show to fill the role of the missing speller up on stage “where anything can happen,” says Carlone. “That’s the fun part.”

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs from September 6-24 at Mainline Theatre in Plateau Mont Royal. For ticket information call (514) 849-3378.