The past few years have been kind to spelling bees. They've become part of the cultural zeitgeist, as some wonderfully eccentric kids (remember that bird girl?) nabbed headlines during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which then led to the buzzed-about bee documentary "Spellbound," even as spelling featured prominently into Myla Goldberg's novel "Bee Season." Suddenly it's cool to be a geek, at least one with a good vocabulary.

With that in mind, it was a no-brainer for a spelling bee to be transformed into a Broadway musical (ready-made plot and drama!), and in 2005 that happened with "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." The show just closed on the Great White Way this past Sunday, but RBTL has brought the touring production to the Auditorium Theatre through Sunday, January 27.

Opening night was surprisingly packed for a blustery Tuesday night. Unfortunately the show got off to a rocky start as some mic feedback and inconsistent sound levels left the opening number all but indecipherable. Thankfully things were quickly fixed, and what followed was a fun, fast-paced, wonderfully smart musical production.

The six "contestants" in the titular middle-school spelling bee represent all sorts of 21st century geek stereotypes. You've got the hyperactive, hyper-liberal byproduct of a nontraditional family; the socially maladjusted home-schooled dork; the aggressively antisocial science weirdo; the overachieving minority student; the emotionally stunted daughter of self-absorbed hippy-dippy parents; and the overly hormonal kiss-ass. Through spelling - and song! - the kids learn lessons about individuality, the sting of disappointment, and the importance of just being yourself. To their credit, the writers avoid (for the most part) overly treacly Disney sentiment, and the lyrics and dialogue are sharply intelligent and caustically funny.

The play milks humor out of just about every facet of a spelling bee, from the selected words (one kid gets nothing but the names of obscure South American giant rodents, for example), to the usage of the words in a sentence (the sentence for the word cow is "Please spell the word ‘cow'"), to the announcer's descriptions of the contestants (one girl was "recovering from a case of cooties"). A couple of the jokes go a little down market - one contestant is eliminated after he gets distracted by a young woman in a tight blouse, and proceeds to sing a song about erections, complete with baudy visual gags - but all in all, it's a surprisingly clever show.

The cast is great, but a few stand out. Katie Boren's tour de force during Marcy's solo number - singing! dancing! piano playing! baton twirling! karate chopping! - got a fairly middling reaction from the audience, but I thought she was amazing. Vanessa Ray as Olive has a voice built for Broadway, and is adorable too. But it's Eric Roediger's show as the iconic William Barfee, the pugnacious, oddly likable braggart who goes to town during his "Magic Foot" number. The role made a star (of sorts) out of Dan Fogler, who went on to star in the big screen's "Balls of Fury" opposite Christopher Walken this summer, and Roediger does a great job filling his magic shoes.

I typically hate audience participation in theater shows, but one of "Spelling Bee's" more likable facets is that it takes volunteers from the audience and makes them part of the bee. Four or five (I lost count) audience members took to the stage, and several made it through almost half the production, staying alive through words both easy ("Mexicans") and hard ("flugelume"). In a hilarious twist that I don't think was intended, one of the audience members managed to correctly spell the word I think was supposed to eliminate her, and she was immediately called back for an even more ridiculous word. (She biffed the first letter and was quickly given her consolation hug and juicebox and was led off the stage.)

The only real issues I had with the production are built into the play itself. The character of Mitch Mahoney, the "comfort counselor," is almost entirely pointless and seems tacked on just to have another body there during group numbers. The actor who played him, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, did a great job during his one solo number, but it felt incongruous to the rest of the play's proceedings, and just wholly unnecessary. Most of the time he just literally sits on a tool in the back of the stage.

Second, while most of the play moves at a pleasantly brisk clip, the proceedings grind to a screeching halt during Olive's somber solo late in the show. In it, she pleads with her mother to return from her nine-month spiritual quest at an Indian ashram, or at least to show some interest in her life. It's a well-meaning piece, sure, but it goes on way too long; during the fourth or fifth chorus of the three singers belting out "I love you" over and over again, a woman behind me loudly commented: "We get it; you love her. Move on with it."

Last, the staging for the "Pandemonium" number was beyond loose, with multiple actions just dribbling all over the stage. I get that the point of the number was, well, pandemonium, but it shouldn't look clumsy and poorly rehearsed. It did last night.

Those minor issues aside, "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" is just about the most charming show I've seen in ages, and well worth the trip through the blustery January weather.