Spellbound: Quad City Music Guild's “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” at the Prospect Park Auditorium through August 16

Like perhaps every former middle-schooler, I have some unresolved spelling-bee trauma. The year: 2000. The place: Kansas City, Missouri. The word: mosaic. An easy word. A gimme. A word for chumps. I was nervous. I wanted to make absolutely sure I had heard correctly.

“Could you repeat the word, please?”

“Mosaic.”

“Oh!”

And that was it. Official spelling bee rules state that “If you start to spell a word, you may start over, but the sequences of letters already spoken may not be changed.” I had said “Oh!” as an exclamation – an acknowledgment. But the moderator was a stickler. By his official ruling, I had spelled mosaic beginning with an “o.” I’ve never lived it down.

A spelling bee may not seem very high stakes to someone who, say, is good at sports. But for an awkward, bookish middle-schooler, the spelling bee is the Super Bowl. And that’s the world of William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s quirky musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, now onstage at Quad City Music Guild's Prospect Park Auditorium under the direction of Michael Turczynski.

Set at a county spelling championship where victory means a trip to nationals in Washington D.C. and defeat means a juice box and a visit with the comfort counselor, the show follows six eccentric adolescents who know every word in the dictionary but can’t string them together into a decent conversation. There’s overachiever Marcy Park (Megan Warren); lonely, introverted Olive Ostrovsky (Joie Stoefen); know-it-all William Barfée (Luke Vermeire); enthusiastically precocious Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre (Adrienne Jane Evans); defending champ Chip Tolentino (Eli Swailes); and perpetually distracted Leaf Coneybear (Jack Bevans). The competition provides the framework, but the real story lies in the wonderfully awkward kids standing behind the microphone. I saw the preview performance on Thursday, August 6.

The irony of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is that spelling isn’t actually these kids’ greatest challenge. They can spell words that look like keyboard malfunctions. Navigating middle school is another matter. The competition is really just the framework to showcase a group of deeply weird, extremely specific adolescents whose real challenge is the universal desire to be noticed, to excel at something, and to avoid public embarrassment.

Fortunately, Turczynski’s production has a cast that gives these characters plenty of personality. The production’s biggest strength is that it understands that Spelling Bee isn’t really a plot-driven show. Yes, there is a competition with eliminations and a winner to be determined. But the real fun comes from watching these kids interact. The show is carried by character moments, and this cast delivers plenty of them.

Casey Scott was a standout as Mitch Mahoney, the former felon turned spelling-bee comfort counselor. Scott brought humor, a strong singing voice, and enough stage presence that I wished the script had found more excuses for Mitch to hand out juice boxes and life advice. And Jeremy Mahr was another highlight as Vice Principal Douglas Panch. Mahr’s improvisational skills shine during the audience participation sequences, when pre-selected volunteers are brought onstage to compete alongside the cast. One of the evening’s funniest moments came when a volunteer speller, given the word “Dutch,” asked for the etymology. Mahr paused just long enough for maximum comedic effect before responding: “The Netherlands.” It was exactly the kind of ridiculous little exchange that makes live theatre worth seeing.

Vermeire was consistently hilarious as William Barfée (which he insists is pronounced “bar-fay”), delivering every line with a congested, nasal tone and a gloriously deadpan attitude. His repeated “I know” every time Panch announced that he had spelled a word correctly earned huge laughs from the audience. It’s a small bit, but Vermeire knew exactly how to milk it. Evans brought a big, energetic performance to Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, leaning into the character’s nervous intensity and larger-than-life personality. While her lisp occasionally faded – particularly when she was singing – her enthusiasm and commitment to the role kept Logainne consistently entertaining.

Jess Fah’s Rona Lisa Peretti also deserves mention, bringing a strong singing voice and, occasionally, a maternal presence as the bee’s organizer and former champion. The production also makes clever use of actors in smaller cameo roles throughout the show. One of the best examples was during “Jesus,” when Marcy Park’s prayers are answered in the most literal and unexpected way possible, thanks to Swailes’ unexpected appearance as the Son of God.

Not every comic choice lands quite as well. Logainne’s two fathers are written and performed as such broad stereotypes that the joke starts to wear thin. In a show in which most of the characters feel like exaggerated versions of real people, they’re a collective element that feel too much like a cartoon.

The visual design helps create the perfect setting for this very specific world. The set, designed by Turczynski with assistance from Rylon Hall, recreates a high school gymnasium complete with bleachers, basketball hoops, and hand-drawn posters. It perfectly captured Spelling Bee's “school assembly” atmosphere. And Halley Price’s costumes complemented the characters nicely, adding another layer of personality to each contestant.

One unusual choice from Music Guild was casting two swing performers for this production. That’s an ambitious choice for a community-theatre production with such a compact cast and relatively short run, but it does provide valuable flexibility. At the preview performance I attended, the swings performed the roles of Chip and Olive (usually performed by Brian Heffernan and Lauren VanSpeybroeck, respectively); on August 15, they will step into the roles of Leaf and Logainne. The swing performers handled their roles well, and most patrons would never have guessed they weren’t the principals.

In the end, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee succeeds because it understands something every former middle-schooler already knows: The things that seem trivial to everyone else can feel like life-or-death when you’re the kid standing in the spotlight. This production may not send you home humming every song, but it will send you home remembering the winningly imperfect kids who sang them.

Quad City Music Guild's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs at the Prospect Park Auditorium (1584 34th Avenue, Moline IL) through August 16, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)762-6610 and visiting QCMusicGuild.com.