E-U-P-H-O-R-I-A - The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is the Egg McMuffin of musicals. It offers a small perk so right and pleasing that it almost feigns indispensibility, making it something of an ideal product.

If fate had cast me as a marketing hotshot, I would've presented it to potential investors as You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown mated to A Chorus Line. Just imagine adults portraying acned high school kids taking part in a spelling competition, with the ersatz kids urgently trying to spell their way to the top. This supplies an excuse for a series of wackily touching confessions based on new-age PTA stereotypes. In further proclaiming its many assets, I'd first want to tout William Finn's smart but never rarefied score. This composer, who gave the world "Four Jews in a Room Bitching," is a doyen of spinning psychoanalytic angst into catchy songs. Here we have ditties concerning embarrassing in-class erections, overbearing parents, gay dads and odes to dictionary love - culminating in one of musical theater's most unlikely production numbers, concerning an obese geek manque, who spells with his "magic foot." Employing his magnificent nasal tones, he sings, "We are the slightest bit bizarre," as his fellow contestants attempt Busby Berkeley gymnastics around him.

This seemingly ramshackle entertainment was originally conceived by Rebecca Feldman, a New York improv comic, then developed into a full-blown musical by the Barrington Stage Company. Its book by Rachel Scheinkin perfectly encapsulates the tyranny of hormones and puts this alongside the yearning and defense mechanism of a polyester-wearing, apparent shmuck of a vice principal who eventually reveals himself as a good guy.

The show also takes something that is usually an irritant - audience volunteers - and turns them into a charming advantage. Before the proceedings begin, three spectators are selected to be part of the spelling team. Due to the clever improvisational skills of the cast, they're effortlessly worked into the story. For example, a splendiferous 10-year-old in a bow tie is singled out as a junior Republican in the making. It's a superb gimmick that the able company ensures adds to the evening's enjoyment and takes even further by rhapsodizing awkward nerdiness into musical euphoria.

Thus, we have a cast of various shapes and sizes that you'd hardly ever see in another musical. Not since the days of Jackie Gleason, for example, have we seen such a graceful and winning song-and-dance performance from a portly fellow as Eric Roediger provides. Rarely has creepiness been portrayed as appealingly as it is in James Kall's vice principal. In their various assignments, the entire skilled ensemble agilely treads the treacherous balance beam between spoof and sincerity. It's to director James Lapine's great credit that he maintains the show's intimacy even in a cavernous touring venue like the Palace.

This is an evening especially conducive to those who spent their formative years learning of human foibles from the pages of Mad and National Lampoon.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: Through May 18 at Palace Theatre, Playhouse Square, 216.241.6000.