REVIEW: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - Hanson Creative

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Presented by: Hanson Creative

Venue: BackDock Arts

Director / Choreographer / Designer: Emma Hanson

Assistant Director: Lucy Wilding

Music Director: Benjamin Richards

Photography: Pip Suschinsky and Mia Lierich

“Adulthood brings its own peculiar rejections.”

I had better use some fancy vocabulary in this review, given the circumstances...

This was my first time seeing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and it didn’t take long to see why people speak about it with such fondness. Hanson Creative’s production at BackDock Arts was part musical, part competition, part group therapy session for overachieving, socially awkward kids trying to spell their way to glory. It was a lexical battlefield with juice boxes!

The show follows six young contestants as they navigate parental pressure, perfectionism, perception, and their own blossoming personalities. Each child brings something different to the competition: overachiever Marcy Park, politically aware Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, homeschooled Leaf Coneybear, intense William Barfée with his “magic foot,” lonely Olive Ostrovsky, and returning champion Chip Tolentino, who is dealing with some inconvenient puberty-related distractions.

Emma Hanson took on the roles of director, choreographer and designer, with Lucy Wilding assisting and Benjamin Richards leading the music. Hanson’s direction balanced broad comedy with real vulnerability, which is essential in a show that could easily become a parade of wacky characters if the audience did not care about them. The scenes and songs may seem silly, but they require an enormous amount of precision in both direction and choreography from Hanson. The small set resembled a school gym, complete with posters and banners, lettered wooden blocks, an adjudicators’ table, and the all-important microphone. It had the look of a community event assembled with care. Plus, it gave the cast lots of space for the fast-paced action.

BackDock Arts was a perfect fit for this kind of close-up comedy. The audience gets pulled into the spelling bee almost immediately, not just as spectators but as part of the competition! Three members of the audience are always roped in to join the bee and I salute them. The chosen participants (only in Act 1) were excellent at spelling words, joining choreography when needed, and reacting in the moment. It takes courage to stand in the spotlight, all while fictional kids are having emotional breakdowns around you. The last audience member left standing kept getting words correct, which made the whole thing even funnier. Eventually, the last-resort Māori word arrived and did its job. (Props to Caleb Hocking's pronunciation of it!) The crowd was audibly enjoying themselves throughout, with plenty of snort-laughing and polite clapping for correctly spelled words like proud parents at an actual spelling bee.

Kimberley Rigby brought sunshine and support to Miss Rona Peretti. She embodied the perfect former-champion-turned-host energy, taking the bee very seriously while genuinely caring about these strange little humans and their emotional well-being. Her vocals were especially beautiful in “The I Love You Song,” where her soaring soprano blended gorgeously with Reid McWha and Megan Hargraves. Isabella Hansen brought Mitch Mahoney to life as the comfort counsellor doing community service, marking each elimination with the solemn ritual it deserved.

Caleb Hockings excelled as Vice Principal Douglas Panch, embodying the pedantic assurance of a man destined to wield a clipboard. He dished out progressively unhinged definitions with an official demeanour and deadpan wit, no matter how hilarious the “use it in a sentence” examples became. (My favourite was 'exclamation.') Panch is one of those roles where the actor has to control the pacing of the whole room, especially when audience participants are involved, and Hockings handled that brilliantly.

The contestants each brought their own unique juvenile energy. They showed up with name tags and fully formed neuroses, like a bunch of precocious stress machines ready to go. Alicia Lorie as Leaf Coneybear may very well be my spirit animal. Leaf was gregarious in the way only a homeschooled child in a cape can be, and Alicia captured that strange little brain beautifully. Their “I’m Not That Smart” solo was wonderfully weird, using vocal modulation, puppet work, and adorable kiddie logic.

Lara Anderson played Logainne, bringing a perfect lisp and a fierce little political-warrior intensity to the role. She had the focused determination of a child who has attended more political meetings than birthday parties, and her “Woe Is Me” was a great character number, capturing both Logainne’s aplomb and the pressure placed on her by her two dads.

Meg Hargraves gave one of the strongest vocal performances as Olive Ostrovsky, the sweet, neglected and nervous contestant who finds comfort in words. “My Friend, the Dictionary” was beautifully sung and hinted at a lot going on beneath the surface. By the time the show reached “The I Love You Song,” alongside Kimberley Richards and Reid McWha, Hargraves had made Olive so sympathetic that the show’s heart grew three sizes.

Varni Keioskie as Marcy Park was polished, terrifyingly capable, and one extracurricular away from total combustion. Her precise elocution made “I Speak Six Languages” a standout solo, presenting Marcy as the queen of bragging and the patron saint of overcommitted children. With a cameo from Jesus himself, the number became a glorious academic spiral of perfectionism, pressure and identity crisis.

Reid McWha’s William Barfée was a theatrical little gremlin, full of rage, self-importance and deeply serious foot-based spelling technique. With a touch of Alan Cumming about him, Reid captured all the irritation, intelligence and strange magnetism the role needs. Dominic Ambrose handled Chip Tolentino’s spectacular adolescent downfall in “My Unfortunate Erection,” which is a hard song to pull off (pun intended). Throwing snacks at the audience mid-crisis, and the number brought exactly the kind of mortified teenage chaos the role needs.

The ensemble work was one of the production’s strengths, with the cast easily shifting into other assorted roles without taking focus from the contestants. At times, they even gestured to people in the audience as “characters,” which suited the playful, semi-improvised feel. Standout group numbers like the cacophonous “Pandemonium,” “Goodbye” and “Second” captured the rising stakes of the competition while keeping the tone light.

The band, led by Benjamin Richards, was precise and well-balanced in the space, supporting the cast through the score’s fast comic rhythms. Everyone in this cast must have studied hard — not only their spelling, but their timing, character work, and emotional nuances. This is a sesquipedalian (yes, I used a thesaurus) way of saying: quirky characters, great musical!

Hanson Creative’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee celebrated the kids who are trying their best. On the surface, it is a musical about spelling increasingly difficult words. Really, it is about growing up, feeling out of place, wanting to feel special, and finding moments of connection through competition. I would call that a S-U-C-C-E-S-S.