spelling bee

Last night, my friend Cai and I watched Spelling Bee at the Carlos P. Romulo auditorium. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a musical comedy locally produced by Atlantis Productions and directed by Bobby Garcia. The story centers around 6 quirky adolescents vying for the first prize and run by 3 equally quirky grown-ups. The fun part of the Bee is when it called 2 celebrity guest spellers and 2 people from the audience on stage to take part in the contest. I think they were pre-selected but had no clue what will happen. The celebrity guest spellers were photographer Raymund Isaac and model Joey Mead.



The play started by introducing the contestants and with the host Rona Lisa Peretti addressing the audience on the rules of the contest. We felt like it was an actual contest and we were the audience. I felt nervous listening to the kids trying to spell the words correctly. I think the kids are supposedly in tenth grade but Cai and I dont even know most of the words! haha! The 6 kids all have different personalites and back stories...
1.) Olive Ostrovsky is the shy girl whose mom is in India while her dad is working late as usual and has yet to pay for the fee of $25.
2.) William Barfee (pronounced as Barfay) was eliminated last year due to his allergic reaction to peanuts. He has a "Magic Foot", he uses his foot to write on the floor before he spells the word out loud.
3.) Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre is the president of the gay and lesbians alliance in her middle school, with two overbearing gay men as parents and speaks with a lisp.
4.) Marcy Park placed 9th in the nationals last year, speaks 6 languages, excels in sports, plays multiple musical instruments, sleeps only three hours a night, hides in the bathroom cabinet, and is getting very tired of always winning.
5.) Leaf Coneybear was 2nd runner up in his district and got into the contest when the champion and 1st runner up had to attend the Bar Mitzvah. He comes from a large family and who thinks he is not smart. He spells a word correctly while in a trance. Most of the words he is assigned are South American rodents with amusing names.
6.) Chip Tolentino is boy scout and champion of the 24th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, he returns to defend his title, but he finds puberty hitting at an inopportune moment. He always get assigned the hard words.



The celebrity and audience guest spellers are given both easy and hard words to spell, depending on whether they need to eliminate them or not yet. For example, Joey Mead was asked to spell "runway", the two audience spellers were asked to spell "lamb" and "dog" while Raymund Isaac, who was the first one to go had to spell a hard word (i forgot).. it's funny looking at their faces when asked to spell a word because if they don't know it, they would say "What?!?" Big applause goes to one of the guest spellers, Mr. Betita who was the last to be eliminated from the guests.. Vice President Panch gave him a hard word which he unexpectedly spelled correctly. When he sat down, he was called again (haha..it's so obvious he has to be eliminated) and this time he did.




The musical numbers and the lyrics of the songs were nothing special but what makes this play a big hit is the fresh and funny dialogues and the quirky attitude of both the contestants and the hosts. Spellers can ask for the definition, language of origin and how to use the word in the sentence. Every single word had a funny definition and the way they used the words in the sentence are very creative (and sometimes very simple!) which causes everyone to laugh uproariously. Of course, they cannot show each and every word so there was part where in the "fastforwarded" the contest with the host and contestants saying gibberish and moving fast (as if you're fast forwarding using your remote) and then it went to "slow motion".

So who do you think won the Spelling Bee? My friend and I incorrectly guessed the winner but that's alright. I think everyone deserved to win! I really felt bad whenever one of them got eliminated and people will sing a melancholic "Goodbye".



On my way home, I suddenly remembered the times when I participated in spelling contests in elementary and high school (got a few silver medals to prove it..haha!) I tried to search for my medals but I couldn't find it any longer. In elementary, the spelling contests were just contestants sitting in a big table and writing our answers on the paper. But once I had the chance to join the spelling contest on stage in high school (i think I was a freshman then). The words were so easy during the first round that I was leading in the contest but then since I didn't even prepare for the contest, the words got harder and harder during the medium and hard rounds that I slowly went down to almost last place! A bit embarassing because my classmates were all rooting for me then later they stopped clapping.. hehehe..But that's okay. I still love words and spelling even now that I'm older and as Olive sang during the play, "the dictionary is my reliable friend".

Try to catch the last show tonight at 8pm!