Billy, Put Down That Phylactery

I am on a lifelong crusade. Okay, let's be honest, I'm on several. But the one that's relevant here is my crusade against Comedy Abuse in the musical theatre. There's a lot of it. A lot of directors and actors don't understand the new shows being written in this new Golden Age for the art form.

Por exemplo...

Too many production of Bill Finn's 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee completely misunderstand the show. There, I said it.

It's not a wacky spoof. It's a not a parody. It's not sketch comedy. It's not silly. It's a serious social comedy. The original cast in New York was not made up of comedians; it was made up of actors. This isn't a show about mugging to the audience, about making funny faces and using funny voices. It's not about gags and bits.

The reason this show is so great and so beloved is that it's so truthful.

The show works best when it's at its most honest, and most truthful. We should feel for all these kids, largely because we recognize our adult selves in them. We've all been one of these kids; most of us have been several of these kids. When Barfee tries to engage Olive in conversation, we all feel his fear of rejection. We cheer when Marcy breaks free of the chains of the expectations of others, because we've all been held captive by those same chains at one point of another in our lives.

Spelling Bee is a serious comedy about the unnecessary, even perverse, pressures our adult society places on all of us. Like the Peanuts comic strip, Spelling Bee is not really about kids at all; it uses kids to explore funny and interesting truths about adults and our adult world. When Peanuts debuted in the early 1950s, it was the first Beat comic strip, exploring philosophy, politics, religion, psychiatry, peer pressure, sports, education, and so much more.

We laugh along with Spelling Bee because we recognize the reality in these poor kids being expected to withstand adult pressures, and the reality of how childishly adults can behave.

Like Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof, and lots of other musicals, the first half of Spelling Bee is all about establishing these bizarre but charming characters, and then the second half turns a little more serious. Most of these kids have difficult home lives in one way another, which explains some of their behavior. We can see that Logainne's dads love her, but is she an emotionally healthy kid? Not entirely.

It should be clear to anyone that "The I Love You Song" doesn't belong in a wacky spoof. This is a searing, raw expression of emotion and it catches the audience -- we get caught up in the amazing musical counterpoint of the voices, and the endless repetitions of "I Love You" until we get to the shattering end of the song, and we're smacked back to reality. We've forgotten Olive's word was chimerical, and when she repeats the definition, we remember -- her loving parents are just her fantasy.

Funny faces and voices are never as funny as the truth about human nature, and Spelling Bee is chock full of truth, about parenting, about exceptional kids, about being Other, about competition, about expectations, about the emotional roller coaster of childhood and the pressures of the adult rat race.

As I wrote in another post, "Many young actors and directors treat these new shows like they're all Nunsense. These folks operate under two misconceptions. The first is that there is essentially just one kind of Funny, that Nunsense and Urinetown are fundamentally the same animal. Wrong. The second misconception is that the best way to approach comedy is to make it funny, to force it into comedy submission. Wrong again."

I always tell our actors the same thing in blocking rehearsals: if you think of an idea that's really funny, please discard it; but if you think of an idea that really reveals character or story, please give it a try. When we know the material is great, we should follow it, serve it, not compete with it. As the great Howard Ashman wrote in his introduction to the Little Shop script, "When Little Shop is at its most honest, it is also at its funniest and most enjoyable."

Behind the laughs, behind Panch's deliciously inappropriate example sentences (and what they reveal about his obviously neurotic worldview), there is real depth and real humanity to this story.

The kids who leave the Bee happy are the ones who come to an understanding of themselves and the world around them. Leaf discovers that the joy of the adventure, the journey, is way more important than winning or not. Marcy discovers that she doesn't have to follow the path others lay out for her; she can follow her own path and forge her own future. Barfee learns to consider the effects of his actions on others, probably for the first time in his life. Olive discovers that coming in second is pretty great too.

To some extent, the narrative arc of Spelling Bee is watching these kids and these adults either find enlightenment or fail to find it. Chip and Logainne have a way to go yet before they find enlightenment. And Rona really seems to be stuck in the past, in her single triumph. but the others are on their way.

Okay, maybe not Mr. Panch.

This experience of participating in the Bee has taught each of these characters something about themselves; and watching The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee teaches each of us in the audience something about ourselves as well, because we see ourselves, our quirks, our own epic fails, our hangups, our strengths and weaknesses, in these kids, these incredibly well-drawn, intricately conceived characters.

When Spelling Bee, its story, and its characters are treated with respect it's both a hilarious comedy and an emotionally satisfying story about the misfits of the world finally getting their due recognition and saying Fuck You to the religion of competition.

Every outrageous comedy of any quality works best when it's performed most honestly. Shows like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors, Cry-Baby, Heathers, Head Over Heels, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Rocky Horror, and lots of others, are at their funniest when the stakes are really high and the characters take it all really seriously. Watch the Rocky Horror film version, and you'll see that the actors never make funny faces at the camera, never stick in bits or gags; they play the characters and the action completely seriously, and that's why it's funny. The higher the stakes, the more serious the motivations and intentions, the funnier it gets.

The brilliant comedian and actor John Cleese once said in an interview that he had learned that the funniest thing in the world is watching someone try not to laugh, and the saddest thing is watching someone try not to cry. And my corollary is that the effort to be funny is the least funny thing in the world. If I can see you trying to make me laugh, that's not nearly as funny as if you're portraying a truthful human moment that I recognize the truth in. It's much more fun for me to discover what's funny than for you to tell me what's funny.

And by the way, truthful human moments are all over Little Shop, Bat Boy, Rocky, Spelling Bee, and the rest. But lots of less inspired productions trample all over those moments in their desperate attempts to Be Funny and Get Laughs.

Those are the wrong goals. The right goal is to tell the truth. That's why actors are on stage. That's why the audience bought tickets. We're the storytellers. It's our job to tell the truth.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott