All for the Love of Spelling

It's hard to believe that a musical could get you hooked on phonics.

But spelling suddenly becomes irresistible in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the touring production of the Broadway hit, now playing at the National Theater.

The pleasing, goofy show takes an amalgam of precocious, oddball kids and makes you root for them all. There are archetypes for sure -- the obsessive Asian kid, the nasal, self-important geek -- but each one still seems like a real kid.

The show takes place entirely within the proceedings of one spelling competition (with a handful of flashbacks thrown in for character development), and the production has a loose, informal feel to it. The jokes are topical (we've got a Gay Dumbledore reference, for better or worse), the audience is treated as spelling bee enthusiasts here to watch the bee, and a few of us even get to participate in the bee itself. The set, full of bright colors and interesting angles, recalls an elementary school in a glance, with bleachers and and a basketball hoop to boot.

The kids are so quirky and cute that it's hard to swear allegiance to just one of them. Standouts include Andrew Keenan-Bolger as Leaf Coneybear, a precious idiot savant raised in Takoma Park, and Dana Steingold's Logainne Schartzandgrubeierre, a lisping youth with two dads and a surprisingly fervent political bent. The show gives us windows into each child's own struggle (earnest Olive Ostrovsky's neglectful parents, Marcy Park's love/hate relationship with perfectionism). Each actor also is able to transition easily from convincing child to the brief adult roles they take on during the flashbacks. One wishes, though, that as Chip Tolentino, Justin Keyes might have done a bit more with the comedy gold he's given: a song about his erection.