There are plenty of words that can be used to describe William Finn and Rachael Sheinkin’sThe 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: S - I - L - L - Y; P - U - E - R - I - L - E; and D - A - F - F - Y are three that come to mind. But these three come off as too harsh until you look up their alternate definitions. What I mean to say is that, yes, it does go for the lowest common denominator a lot of the time, it uses some gimmicks (audience participation is an example) that can seem a bit cliché, and it is an odd mix of juvenile yet adult-content comedy with some S - H - M - A - L - T - Z thrown in, but it is also a hilarious and endearing work that should keep everyone laughing U - P - R - O - A - R - I - O - U - S - L - Y. It’s a departure, because prior to Bee, composer/lyricist Finn was known for his bite and intellectual prowess in darker musicals such as the Falsetto series and A New Brain. The songs in Bee are fun, and several do have deeper undertones, but the thing that keeps Sheinkin’s thin plot whose title tells it all is that it celebrates quirkiness and is willing to go anywhere and everywhere for a laugh.

The setting is the Putnam gymnasium/auditorium, brought to stark life by Beowulf Boritt and harboring a few sweet and clever surprises. The stock characters that populate and oversee the Bee are all flat archetypes: the Alpha Male prior winner Chip Tolentino (Miguel Cervantes), the driven Asian girl Marcy Park (Katie Boren), the distracted child of hippies Leaf Coneybear (Michael Zahler), the former winner turned successful realtor Rona Lisa Peretti (Jennifer Simard), the slightly unhinged Vice Principal Douglas Panch (James Kall), the militant daughter of two dads Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, the little girl caught between warring parents Olive Ostrovsky (Lauren Worsham), the urbanista comfort counselor Mitch Mahoney (Alan H. Green) working out his public service at this event,and the obnoxious B - R - A - G - G - A - D - O - C - I - O misfit William Barfee (Eric Petersen), always quick to remind us of the accent ague at the end to make the pronunciation Bar-Fay. If you look closely, you might find one of the caricatures reminds you of what you fancy yourself as way back when. That’s the point.

Director James Lapine has infused the show with boundless energy, including energetic wind sprints of song and dance numbers choreographed by Dan Knechtges. It’s designed to wring the most laughter possible from the audience, and judging from the opening night crowd, it is quite successful. There is not a weak link in the cast, and they have been working long enough to know how to incorporate those who are voluntarily brought aboard from the audience, even in the dance numbers.