On Thursday, the wife and I took my mother-in-law to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. NB that I am not linking to the official website of the play because it has a stupid Flash intro. You can Google it if you’re interested, and the Wikipedia entry probably has a link, too.
Anyway, it was very funny. There’s one sad song that lasts way too long near the end that doesn’t seem to fit the play at all, but otherwise it’s all very good. The whole play is, as the title suggests, a spelling bee. They invite a few members of the audience up to spell along with the cast members. It’s quite obvious that the audience is supposed to set up a few one-liners, and then go back to their seats. One of the audience members actually spelled some word I had never heard of correctly, and they had to give him another really hard one to get him to go sit down.
I think my favorite part was when they defined “Mexicans” as “An American slang word for people from Guatemala, El Salvador . . .” I think there was more, but I couldn’t hear over the laughter.
Anyway, I recommend the play to anyone with the opportunity to go.