The James Logan Courier

By Alyssa Pimentel, Courier School News Editor

The semi-annual musical presented by the drama and choir program, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, was a hilarious treat for the audience.

The musical was about six kids competing in the spelling bee, all hoping to be the winner. Each character’s background story was performed as an aside as the spelling bee competition progressed.


The characters were: (in order of appearance)
Chip Tolentino played by senior Andrew Ulang.
Logainne Schwartzandgrubenniere by Angelica Gaerlan, 12.
Leaf Coneybear by Steven Dinh.
William Barfee by sophomore Jason Warrenburg.
Marcy Park by Christine Delostrinos.
Olive Ostrovsky by Kristen Dattolico.

All of the characters mentioned above played the role of the spellers. The adults authorizing the spelling bee competition were played by:

Alina Tassano, 11, as Rona Lisa Perretti.
Nathaniel Tan, 12, as Vice Principal Douglas Panch.
Hamed Noorzay, 12, as Mitch Mahoney.

When the show started, selected audience members were chosen to be part of the cast on stage as extra spellers. It was through these extra characters that the cast was able to make funny comments. Though those lines were part of the script, it seemed to come naturally to those reciting it.

All characters acted and sang beautifully, playing their role like it’s part of who they really are. Due to the time restraint, some character’s background story was not as emphasized as others.

Chip Tolentino was last year’s winner but sadly lost due to an unfortunate timing of a bodily function, caused by his sudden crush on Leaf Coneybear’s sister, Marigold. In this scene, Andrew Ulang performed a song about having an erection that had the whole audience laughing for its entire duration.

Logainne Schwartzandgrubenniere was a very opinionated ten-year old with two dads who pressured her to win at everything, saying, “America doesn’t like losers.” As a speller, she wrote the word on her arm before formally spelling it onto the mic.

Leaf Coneybear seems to be the comedian of the group. As a somewhat strange kid, he was looked down upon the others. He was also an outcast because he placed as the third runner-up in his district county spelling bee and was only in the annual spelling bee because the first two were attending a birthday party.
William Barfee seemed to have been the anti-social angry kid that everyone avoided. His technique at spelling words was his magic foot. When given a word, he thought about it and then his foot would just spell it correctly, as if by magic. Later on in the musical, he became the overall winner.

Marcy Park, an overall student, decided to purposely throw the competition. She no longer wanted to be known as someone who was “all business.”

Olive Ostrovsky was the runner-up. In the beginning, she befriended William even though he did not want to. But eventually, when it was just them as the final two, they seemed to have been getting along very well. William even contemplated on throwing the word because of her but she encouraged him to just spell it correctly.

There were so many factors that went into making the production as great as it was that is not possible to recreate or summary what made the musical so funny to the audience. It could simply be the characters themselves, like Leaf Coneybear or it could be the sly comments made by Vice Principal Douglas Panch and the 3rd annual winner Rona Lisa Perretti making the audience laugh with them. But either way, this musical as said by senior Coleton Schmitto, “was one of the best ones Logan had.” Anyone who did not see it the past weekend missed out on an overall great production.