Did Broadway Critics Find Finn and Sheinkin's Spelling Bee Winning?

After receiving a slew of rave reviews when it played off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre earlier this season, William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee moved to the Great White Way, where it opened at the Circle in the Square on May 2. Did critics think it spelled S-U-C-C-E-S-S?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

Eric Grode in his Broadway.com Review: "Spelling Bee is first and foremost a comedy, and it might even surpass Avenue Q in terms of laughs per minute, but it doesn't stint on tenderness or emotional honesty... Lapine has reconfigured his staging beautifully to accommodate Circle in the Square's thrust space: An instance of divine intervention has grown in scope, as has a slightly overdrawn song about one contestant's erection. Lapine's exacting style has always been a welcome counterweight to Finn's loonier impulses, and he blends the surreal goings-on with the squirm-inducing verisimilitude of Beowulf Boritt's school-auditorium set and Jennifer Caprio's endearingly pathetic costumes."

Charles Isherwood of The New York Times: "The happy news for this happy-making little show is that the move to larger quarters has dissipated none of its quirky charm. In fact, the musical has managed to make lemonade from one of Broadway's most lemony spaces... The affectionate performances of the six actors burdened with the daunting challenge of inhabiting young souls have not been stretched into grotesque shape by the move to a large theater... Focus on any one of these talented performers, anxiously looking on as a competitor faces down a polysyllabic curveball, and you'll see the twitchy behavior of a real youngster... Lisa Howard and Jay Reiss, meanwhile... are no less skilled at finding the honorable qualities in more mature geekdom."

Clive Barnes of The New York Post: "Its intimacy and sly humors might well flourish more readily in an off-Broadway ambiance, but, like Queen Victoria, I was not amused. I was not even entertained. How do you spell C-L-O-Y-I-N-G?... William Falsettos Finn's lyrics and, most particularly, music are mediocre on a grand scale. The sounds keep on coming like the U.S. Cavalry, but the tunes seem very much alike in their playful jollity, while at times the piano--it's only a five-piece band--vamps enough to give Theda Bara a run for her money."

Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "In its move from Second Stage on 43rd St. to Circle in the Square on 50th St., not a whit of its artifice or preciousness has been lost... Spelling Bee, with a score by William Finn and book by Rachel Sheinkin, is an elongated skit. It is hilarious that there is a separate credit for Rebecca Feldman, who 'conceived' this painfully cutesy farrago. What is disappointing is that, as anyone who saw the Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound knows, a spelling bee can be extremely dramatic... There is nothing compelling about Spelling Bee because everything in it is forced, including most of the performances. I don't blame the actors--they're simply fulfilling the material."

David Rooney of Variety: "It's hard to imagine sweeter vindication for all the brainiac pariahs doomed throughout their school years to nerd status than The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. And it's especially sweet that William Finn's delightful musical about the awkward path to adulthood has negotiated the transition to Broadway with all its modesty and charms intact. In fact, rather than interpret the move from Off Broadway as a mandate to pump up the size and slickness, the show's creatives have shrewdly nurtured its low-tech, idiosyncratic spirit in refreshing ways, making resourceful use of their new home at Circle in the Square."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "Those nerdy, geeky kids competing in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have made the transfer from off-Broadway to the Big Time--Broadway--with their funny, offbeat charm intact. Indeed the musical, which reopened Monday at Circle in the Square, is better than ever, more heartfelt and overflowing with a generosity of spirit that tempers a tale in which the result has to be bittersweet: Someone wins and someone loses... Director James Lapine has done a savvy job of adapting the musical for the new theater, one of Broadway's more eccentric spaces."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "Director James Lapine has polished and pumped up the production without losing any of the handmade honesty that made the spelling-bee spoof so endearing. At second hearing, William Finn's score is more complex than its raucous effortlessness suggests. The virtuosic cast members have expanded their heartfelt performances into this big, often difficult theater as if it had been waiting to be transformed into a school gymnasium for just such a county competition."