Back On The A-List

Composer's hit musical spells s-u-c-c-e-s-s.

Naomi Pfefferman
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

W

illiam Finn, composer, lyricist
and co-creator of the hit musi-
cal The 25th Annual Putnam
County Spelling Bee, says his own surname
is the result of a misspelling. "When my
great-uncle came from Russia, he kept say-
ing he was looking for someone named
Fein, so the genius at Ellis Island gave him
the name Finn," he explains.
"The original name was something like,
`Oren; but I prefer Finn, so the error was
fortuitous."
Even more fortuitous, Bee has placed
Finn back on Broadway's A-list after a
decade of relative obscurity. The musical,
which won two Tonys in 2005, tells of six
misfit tweens, played by adult actors, who
experience epiphanies while tackling words
such as "boanthropy" (the delusion that one
has become an ox) and "phylactery" (as in
"Billy, put down that 'phylactery' — we're
Episcopalian',' the word pronouncer says).
In addition to the touring cast, the musi-
cal features audience members who sign
up to participate in the fictional bee (and
who are eliminated via elaborate improvi-
sational schemes).
In addition to the character Logainne
Schwartzandgrubenierre, a chronic lisper
who keeps getting words like "sluice" and
"cystitis" and who is the half-Jewish
daughter of yuppie gay dads, the endear-
ingly geeky main characters include the
unhappy overachiever Marcy Park; the
Asian American who aces "phylactery"; and
sweet-tempered Leaf Coneybear, who came

Putnam
Producer

David Stone, producer of The 25th
Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,
will visit Detroit Oct. 3 as the sixth
winner of the Apple Award honoring
stage excellence.
Stone, who also produced Wicked
and The Diary of Anne Frank, will be
honored at a special evening event and
conduct master classes for theater
students earlier in the day at Wayne
State University.
"Sometimes you are involved in a
production that you are proud of artis-
tically but it is not successful corn-

in third in his school bee but is competing
because "the person who came in first has
to go to their bat mitzvah, and the person
who came in second has to attend the bat
mitzvah," he says.
Finn — known for mining his Jewish
and gay identities — enjoyed commercial
and critical success in the 1980s and '90s
for Falsettos, the story of a gay man, his
Jewish family and AIDS; one of its sprightly
numbers is titled, "Four Jews in a Room
Bitching." But his more recent fare, such
as Elegies, a song-cycle honoring his late
friends, closed after brief runs in New York.
It was Finn's friend Wendy Wasserstein
— the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
who died of lymphoma last year — who
prompted him to consider a spelling bee
musical in 2002. Although already in poor
health, Wasserstein had trekked to a Lower
East Side theater, in a rat-infested former
chop shop, to see her weekend nanny, Sarah
Saltzberg, perform in a sketch show about a
fictional bee.
The production, C R E P U S C U L E,
was the brainchild of actor-director
Rebecca Feldman, who had never lived
down misspelling "bruise as "bruze" in a
childhood competition.
The other actors also personalized their
characters. Saltzberg, for one, culled mate-
rial from myriad girlhood diaries to create
Logainne, a somber 10-year-old who wears
face-contorting braids and always takes
precisely the same number of steps to the
microphone. (Logainne gave — and still
gives — an improvised, politically cor-
rect lecture that draws on Saltzberg's own,
oh-so-serious bat mitzvah speech about

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

children in the Holocaust.)
Wasserstein saw something in
C R E P U S C U L E for Finn, now 55,
who did not bother to attend the produc-
tion but watched a tape of it on his bed,
falling asleep in the middle of the show.
His snoozing did not affect his enthu-
siasm for the premise. Finn says he was
drawn to the concept of a spelling bee as a
metaphor for human experience.
"Sometimes you get the easy word, and
sometimes you don't," says the composer,
who promptly wrote the Bee ditty with the
refrain, "Life is random and unfair:' But the
show's theme soon switched to the zeit-
geist's obsession with winners, as evidenced
by the success of other bee-themed work
(notably the documentary Spellbound) and
his own love of reality television.
"They're my favorite shows:' Finn gushes
of the genre. "My very favorite is Project
Runway, which is all about fashion and
design — omigod, it's the greatest show
ever invented. And I love America's Next
Top Model. I just find winners fascinating. I
enjoy the joy of winning."
His lust for victory can perhaps be traced
to his middle-school years in Natick, Mass.,
when Finn says his reputation as a "smarty
pants" rendered him an outcast who spent
much of his time "in my room, in the dark,
playing the guitar I had received for my bar
mitzvah."
He would have loved to participate in
a spelling bee, but he didn't know of any
around town. Rather, the prominent corn-
petitions seemed to cater to the jocks, who
could butt heads in sports, and to the pretty
girls, who could vie for prom queen.

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

mercially," Stone, 41, recently
Theatre.
told the Pennsylvania
"A Conversation With
Gazette, the alumni maga-
David Stone," a question-
zine of his alma mater, the
and-answer session open to
University of Pennsylvania.
the public, starts at 10:30
"Other times you are involved
a.m. at the university's
in something that makes
Schaver Music Recital Hall
money but is crappy.
in the Old Main annex, 480
David St one
"When it all works, when
W. Hancock. He will do a
you're involved in something
private master class in the
brilliant that also turns out well finan-
afternoon.
cially, it's one of the best feelings in
The Apple, named for the late
the world."
Nederlander family matriarch Sara
The award gala, to be held at the
Applebaum Nederlander, honors stage
Fisher Theatre, includes a cocktail
excellence. It is given in partner-
reception and strolling supper before a
ship with the WSU College of Fine,
performance of Spelling Bee. Proceeds
Performing and Communication Arts
benefit the WSU Department of
and the Nederlander Company and is

"Even today',' Finn complains, "the
`smarty pants' don't usually get the good
competitions. It's still all models and looks
and everything but the 'smarts:"
To write Bee's book, Finn selected his
precocious former musical-theater student,
Rachel Sheinkin, who eventually won the
Tony for her efforts.
"Bill once called my writing 'sub-
English," she says, laughing quietly and
sounding as soft-spoken as Finn is bom-
bastic. But Finn had noticed her flair for
writing wickedly witty dialogue.
"Bill calls it 'perverse; meaning he thinks
I have an incredibly morbid sense of
humor',' she says.
While co-creating the show, Sheinkin
wrote in Finn's detritus-filled office as he
scribbled crossword puzzles, ate, napped
— and finally banged out a song in a burst
of inspiration. "We agreed that the [device]
of adults playing children announces to
everyone that, 'Hey, we're in this to laugh
about our childhoods:" she says.
"These kids who felt like freaks when
they arrive to the bee find others who are
just like them, and they realize they're not
going to be alone for the rest of their lives:'
Finn says.
Whenever he speaks to teenagers, Finn
tells them they will be appreciated as adults
for the very qualities that render them
nerds in high school.
"Inevitably the cutest girl or the hand-
somest guy raises their hand and says, `But
I'm happy here," he adds with a hearty
laugh. nd I say, 'Well, I'm not really talking
to you. I'm addressing everyone else.'"

part of a visiting artist fund to bring
acclaimed theater professionals to the
Wayne campus.
Stone's productions, which include
Three Days of Rain and The Vagina
Monologues, have won Tony, Grammy,
Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle,
Lucille Lortel and Obie awards. He has
lectured at Yale, the Julliard School,
New York University and Columbia
University.
- Suzanne Chessler

The Apple Award benefit is planned
for Wednesday evening, Oct. 3, at
the Fisher Theatre. $250. (313)
577-5342.

September 27 a 2007

67

