25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
June 10th, 2007The Wadsworth (Pantages Season)
Musical, we went with Pam
I love the music, songs and singers in this musical, and I have waited three years to see it (missed the original cast on Broadway). Needless to say, seeing the original cast was an absolute thrill!
The only original cast member missing was Derrick Baskin (his harmony was missed on "The I Love You Song"), but with all the principals there, I can't complain. It was wonderful. We got to see Dan Fogler's Tony-Winning performance. But surprisingly, every single character was larger than life. And the unwitting audience participation added several big laughs. The musical is innovative, charming and laugh-out-loud funny. We laughed so hard! The music is lush and beautiful with some great harmony.
A warning: this musical is NOT necessarily geared toward children (unless your children already know what an erection is). It's an unflinching look at the development of children in this context, with some themes involving adolescence and some overbearing parents and their effects on children, but always handled with a light touch and humor. This is Will Finn at his finest, and his music and songs do not disappoint.
I have to wonder... this musical strikes me as being a cast-centric one, since it plays so heavily on the believable child characters these actors are able to create. I can see how it may not fly without an exceptional cast. But here in LA, it's the original cast for the exclusive run, and I couldn't have been happier. I've been looking forward to it for months!
A rare opportunity to see this cast 3 years into the show's run (it's played 880+ shows on Broadway and is stilling running). Five stars.
posted by Shephard at 2:53 PM
![[title of show]](http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b285/ShephardSummers/FAV--TitleOfShow-blog.jpg)
2Comments:
I saw your playbill on your regular blog and had to hop over here to see what you said about it. Lori and Tammy and I went to see this the year before last in NYC and absolutely LOVED it. It was such a fun show. We tried to get Lori to be one of the "cast members" but in the end, she opted to watch it from the audience. We had FAB seats!
Stacie
I didn't care for this show when I first saw it with the original cast, but that may be because I was in one of the second-row, lottery, very uncomfortable bleacher seats. I also thought they drove the "inappropriately funny sentence for each word" joke into the ground. Now I really enjoy listening to the music, especially "I Speak Six Languages," the "I Love You Song," and "Pandemonium."
Since the original cast developed the characters themselves, I can definitely understand why seeing the original cast is special.
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