Daily Show Alum Mo Rocca to Join Spelling Bee 4/17
The hit musical will also welcome spellers from the San Francisco/Boston company to the cast, beginning the same night: Aaron J. Albano as Chip Tolentino, Stanley Bahorek as Leaf Coneybear, Jenni Barber as Olive Ostrovsky, Sara Inbar as Logainne Schwartzandgrubiennaire and Greta Lee as Marcy Park. Jared Gertner, the sixth speller from the San Francisco/Boston company, joined the Broadway cast on January 30. Also new to the Broadway Bee will be Jennifer Simard Forbidden Broadway, The Thing About Men as Rona Lisa Perretti, a role she performed on the national tour, and James Monroe Iglehart as comfort counselor Mitch Mahoney, also from the San Francisco/Boston company.
A hilariously hip musical comedy, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee features six young people in the throes of puberty, overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves, learning that winning isn't everything and that losing doesn't necessarily make you a loser. The show features music and lyrics by William Finn, book by Rachel Sheinkin and was directed by James Lapine.
Rocca is a humorist and author known for his tongue-in-cheek field reports and commentary on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and CBS' Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. He served as a correspondent for Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for four years and reported from the floors of the 2004 political conventions for Larry King Live. Rocca is a frequent contributor to MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and serves as a judge on Iron Chef America. On radio, he is a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! On stage, Rocca starred in and co-adapted the 2005 San Francisco Symphony productions of Gershwin's Of Thee I Sing and Let 'em Eat Cake and played Doody in the Southeast Asian tour of Grease.