The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Role Off-Broadway & Broadway 2005 Melbourne 2006 San Francisco 2006 London 2011
Rona Lisa Peretti Lisa Howard Marina Prior Betsy Wolfe Katherine Kingsley
Douglas Panch Jay Reiss Tyler Coppin Jim Cashman Steve Pemberton
Mitch Mahoney Derrick Baskin Bert Labonte James Monroe Iglehart Ako Mitchell
Olive Ostrovsky Celia Keenan-Bolger Natalie O'Donnell Jenni Barber Hayley Gallivan
William Barfée Dan Fogler Magda Szubanski Jared Gertner David Fynn
Logainne SchwartzandGrubenierre Sarah Saltzberg Christen O'Leary Sara Inbar Iris Roberts
Marcy Park Deborah S. Craig Natalie Mendoza Greta Lee Maria Lawson
Leaf Coneybear Jesse Tyler Ferguson Tim Wright Stanley Bahorek Chris Carswell
Chip Tolentino Jose Llana David Campbell Aaron J. Albano Harry Hepple
Casting history
The principal casts of notable productions of The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a musical comedy with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin, conceived by Rebecca Feldman with additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally quirky grown-ups. The 2005 Broadway production, directed by James Lapine and produced by David Stone, James L. Nederlander, Barbara Whitman, Patrick Catullo, Barrington Stage Company and Second Stage Theater, earned good reviews and box-office success and was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning two, including Best Book. The show has spawned various other productions in the United States, and other countries. An unusual aspect of the show is that four real audience members are invited on stage to compete in the spelling bee alongside the six young characters. During the 2005 Tony Awards, former Presidential candidate Al Sharpton competed. Another amusing aspect of the show is that the official pronouncer, usually an improv comedian, provides ridiculous usage-in-a-sentence examples when asked to use words in a sentence. For instance, for the word palaestra, he says, Euripides said, 'What happens at the palaestra stays at the palaestra. '[citation needed] At some shows, adult-only audiences (over age 16) are invited for Parent-Teacher Conferences, also known as adult night at the Bee. These performances are peppered with sexual references and profanity inspired by R-rated ad-libs made during rehearsals. The Broadway cast album was released on May 31, 2005 and is available from Ghostlight Records, an imprint of Sh-K-Boom Records.