At first glance, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee leans gleefully into anarchy: awkward bodies, competitive nerves, bodily functions, and a sense that anything could derail at any moment.
This musical, presented by Funk Soul Productions, with music and lyrics by William Finn, understands that chaos is the joke, but also that chaos is the mask. Underneath the gags sits a quiet melancholy about childhood, expectation, and the moment when the rules that once felt reassuring start slipping out of reach.
This is a show about control. Or rather, about the fantasy of it. Once, all you had to do was learn the words written down in a dictionary. Spell them correctly, and you’d be safe.
But puberty arrives. Erections arrive. Parents loom: tiger mums, absent dads, or worse, well-meaning ones watching too closely. Winning begins to feel conditional. And somewhere along the line, the question shifts from can I spell the word? to what does it cost to be the winner and who decided that mattered anyway?
The comedy lands consistently, but never cheaply. This is an unusually even ensemble: there isn’t a weak link or a dropped beat. The cast operates as a tightly tuned ecosystem, alive to each other’s reactions even when they’re not the focus of the scene.
You could watch this production multiple times and follow a different character each night; the flickers of envy, dread, relief or delight registering in the margins while someone else is centre stage. It feels like stepping back onto a handball court during recess, scanning not just the ball but everyone orbiting it.
Special mention must go to Jaxon Joy, whose Barfée is all bravado and fragility, with the infamous “magic foot” becoming both running joke and talisman.
And Neve Sargent, whose Logainne is exquisitely controlled: knees pressed together, feet on tiptoe, smile frozen just a fraction too long, a lisp that never slips even as the pressure mounts. You can feel the parental gaze hovering just offstage. It’s a performance that understands stillness as comedy.
Vocally, the ensemble harmonies under Immi Beattie’s direction are strong across the board, but the standout musical moment comes in Olive’s number, The I Love You Song, with Amelia Boys delivering a genuinely affecting turn. It’s the moment where laughter tightens in the throat, and the emotional stakes crystallise.
Director Gracie Greenrod and choreographer Alycia Angeles manage the show’s youthful energy with impressive control. Pandemonium becomes exactly that, but a controlled chaos, and a slow-motion sequence in the show is beautifully judged, allowing the emotional undercurrent to surface without underlining it. Transitions are clean, pacing is tight, and the production never sags under its own cleverness.
Audience participation, always a danger zone in this musical, is handled deftly. When volunteers inevitably try to improvise or pull focus, the cast responds quickly and generously, redirecting the energy without humiliation. One participant joked about using the “magic foot” while wearing towering platform shoes; the deadpan retort — “it would be hard in those shoes” — landed perfectly. The show stays playful, not predatory.
Design-wise, the set is minimal but effective, giving the performers room to work. Costumes do much of the character-building heavy lifting. Sargent’s purple pantsuit, studded with political buttons, is the most immediately legible; a visual shorthand for ambition, ideology, and inherited pressure.
Much of the wardrobe feels op-shop assembled rather than custom-built, which is understandable given budget constraints and arguably suits the scrappy, adolescent aesthetic of the piece.
What lingers most, though, is the joy. Not a forced, competitive joy, but the joy of performers who look genuinely free and uninhibited onstage. As a young theatre company, this cast still feels close to childhood; not yet fully burdened by “adulting,” ego, or the brutal calculus of winners and losers.
That proximity gives the production its emotional honesty. It mirrors the show’s central tension: what is lost when systems, expectations, and the pain of not being the “winner” begin to press down? And how might we hold onto that early joy without remaining trapped by our parents’ mistakes or our own awkward transitions into adulthood?
This Spelling Bee understands that comedy and melancholy are not opposites but partners. It’s a show about learning the rules and then realising they were never the whole story.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is presented by Funk Soul Productions and runs to 7 February at the Goodwood Theatre & Studios. 166 Goodwood Road Goodwood SA 5034.
Tickets: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1509056?
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/funksoulproductions/?hl=en
Photo credits: Henry Cook
