Winning isn’t everything and losing doesn’t always make you a loser…
Called “irresistible, riotously funny and remarkably ingenious” by the New York Times when it opened on Broadway in 2005, Spelling Bee is a Tony Award winning musical comedy that follows six middle-school overachievers as they navigate the chaos of their local spelling bee competition.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Key City Public Theatre from October 1st through October 25th. Thursday, Friday, Saturday shows are at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday shows are at 2:30 p.m. Tickets ($20 on Thursday/Sunday, $24 on Friday/Saturday, $10 for students any performance) are available at keycitypublictheatre.org or at the playhouse box office, 419 Washington Street, Port Townsend, 360-385-KCPT.
The Wall Street Journal called Spelling Bee, “that rarity of rarities, a super-smart musical that is also a bona fide crowd-pleaser,” and the KCPT production, with its inspired acting, musical direction from Linda Dowdell, choreography by Denise Winter, and costume design by Tamara Halligan, aims to live up to that reputation by making audiences of all ages laugh, sing, and, in the end, maybe even show off their own spelling skills!
Overseen by a group of adults, who have barely escaped adolescence themselves, this group of misfits overcome a series of increasingly outlandish trials before revealing the true lesson of the play: winning isn’t everything and losing doesn’t always make you a loser.
The KCPT ensemble includes many familiar faces, including Leah Finch, whose performance in Spelling Bee marks her first return to KCPT since Bark! The Musical, Port Townsend’s own Joey Ripley and Christa Holbrook, Marcy Girt, the standup comic from NYC, Austin Krieg, who was nominated Best High School Actor by Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, and, fresh off of their performances in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Maggie Bulkley, Anthony Phillips, Kenn Mann and everybody’s favorite acrobaticalist Tomoki Sage!