Thursday, February 15, 2007

"The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"

Birmingham is a small city that is trying to think like a bigger one.

For as long as I can remember we have always had only one available venue for seeing Broadway shows..."The Birmingham Broadway Series" (catchy title, eh?.) It slowly gained popularity here and filled it seats for most productions with people who had a love of live theatre.

The picture changed last year when "Broadway Across America" decided to set up camp here and sell tickets to its own touring productions.

This, of course, caused quite a bit of turmoil within the "Magic City" (as we like to call it here in Bham).

The original series was locally run, while the newer one was a national company. They both offered a different group of choices of Broadway musicals and plays.

This new competition concerned the original series as they did not think that Bham was big enough to support two similar programs. After all, we are known here more for our football teams than our culture! (Roll Tide and all that....!)

As the season was announced and choices were given, many switched over to the new series. Dave and I switched our season tickets because we liked the shows better that were being offered. We were, quite honestly, made to feel like traitors for leaving the local group and did feel a bit guilty. But, espousing "Free Enterprise" and all that, we made our move.

Well, several productions later, it seems as if Bham may not be large enough to give enough support to two programs....Both Series, it seems, are not filling their productions to the capacity that they would like. So, the original "Birmingham Broadway Series" is trying to win back it's original patrons. Letters went out offering free tickets to all of its old subscribers for an upcoming perfomance of, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee".

So, of course, I dragged Dave there the other night (right after the tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings had all expired for our area!) to see this Tony award winning musical.

This show follows 6 finalists as they compete in a championship spelling bee.... simple premise for a two hour show. It would cause one to wonder how this time could be filled in a cute and lively way. But, I must say, they did it quite successfully. It was entertaining and fun as well as poignant and touching.

To add to it, four volunteers from the audience were picked to join the cast up on the stage and become part of the spelling bee. This added a lot of local flavor to the production as these "good sports" blended in and became instant "stars"!

I am not sure what the future holds for both of these Broadway Series, as that remains to be seen. I would like to think that, in time, both productions will be able to survive here, offering our city a variety of options and choices.

In the meantime, I highly recommend this show if it comes to your fair city. It was quite J-O-V-I-A-L and filled with a P-R-O-F-U-S-I-O-N of G-A-I-E-T-Y.

I did spell those correctly, didn't I?

: )

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