I should have mentioned this before now, but better late than never! I’m in the ensemble cast of the Seoul Players’ first musical production, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

We opened last weekend to two sold out shows on May 29th and 30th. It was great fun, and we’ve gotten some great reviews from our opening weekend:

The Korea Herald (who gave me special mention!)

…The show, directed by expat Margaret Whittum, far exceeded my expectations, nearing professional quality. Held at Roofers, a bar in Itaewon, I could’ve easily been in any of the numerous well-respected community theater spaces that I had frequented in Chicago. Korean friends that I went with said it was better than musicals they had paid upwards of 100,000 won to see…

…Although the entire ensemble was talented, if I had to pick a favorite, Jessica Lofbomm delivers an excellent performance as Olive Ostrovsky, a lonely girl whose best friend is her dictionary. In the beginning of the show, it may have been easy to overlook Lofbomm as each member of the cast shone in their own right, but Lofbomm’s clear soprano and heartfelt delivery was spot-on…

Seoul Style

…Don’t expect to see any small performances on stage for Putnam County. Each character has been meticulously developed. I could not find any wooden expressions and for that I have to tip my hat to the director and cast for the special attention they paid to the details. You are going to find some great characters brought to life by superb performances…

The Three Wise Monkeys

…The six main contestants in  Spelling Bee are well delineated against themselves. And in spite of the usually very true conclusion that the performers of a local theater company spend too much time vamping with each other, this Seoul Players production is able to avoid that and all histrionics from the cast actually goes for telling the story…

We have two more weekends of performances on Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm and Sunday evenings at 5pm through June 13th. This weekend is already sold out, and tickets for closing weekend are going quickly. If you’d like to reserve tickets, email seoulspellingbee@gmail.com. More event details are here.

We have created some funny character sketch videos to promote the show. Click here to view them all on youtube.

-Jessica