25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Original Cast Recording
Music	William Finn
Lyrics	William Finn
Book	Rachel Sheinkin
Productions	2004 Workshop 2005 Off-Broadway 2005 Broadway 2006 Melbourne 2007 US Tour 2007 Seoul 2010 Hong Kong 2011 West End 2012 Oslo 2012 Jerusalem 2013 Mexico City
Awards	Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Musical

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a long one-act musical comedy with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin and 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.'" 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. The original Broadway cast recording was nominated for a Grammy Award.