“You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - May 2011

Happiness is…seeing You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at the Ghent Playhouse!

“None of the cast is actually six years old. And they don’t really look like Schulz’ Peanuts cartoon characters. But this doesn’t seem to make that much difference once we are into the play, because what they are saying to each other is with the openness of that early childhood time, and the obvious fact is that they are all really quite fond of each other.”

– Clark Gesner

Gesner (1938-2002), who wrote the music and lyrics and collaborated on the creation of the book for You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, made this remark in reference to the original 1967 off-Broadway production, but it is just as applicable to this delightful 2011 staging at the Ghent Playhouse. Only here, remarkably, many of the actors DO manage to look like Charles M. Schulz’ iconic creations, which only adds to the fun.

Peanuts was really the first comic strip to “go platinum” commercially. Officially launched in October of 1950, the strip ran for almost half a century, drawn continuously by Schulz himself. His last original strip ran on the morning of after his death in February of 2000. The first Peanuts TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on CBS in 1965. Around that time a musician named Clark Gesner sent Schulz a recording of some songs he had written inspired by his characters. Schulz approved and Gesner released a “concept album.” In short order those songs, and others, combined with a book credited to “John Gordon” but actually crafted by Gesner and his cast and crew, and often lifted verbatim from Schulz’ strips, became You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

The 1967 production, which I saw at age ten, was remarkable for its minimalism which cleverly aped Schultz’ drawing style. The short-lived 1999 Broadway revival, on which the Ghent production is based and which I saw with my younger son when he was ten, was too big and flashy to do justice to the original. The whole idea of Charlie Brown on Broadway was a dumb one and it soured me on the changes made to the script and score for this revival. I am particularly familiar with the original because I played Snoopy* (extremely badly!!!) in high school and saw no need to tamper with perfection.

But even in 1967 You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown wasn’t perfect. The second female in the original script is the long-forgotten Patty – NOT Peppermint Patty who had already made her debut in the strip in 1966 and was an instant hit. Schroeder was a non-singing part, and even mega-popular Snoopy was oddly omitted from most of the ensemble numbers. The 1999 rewrite replaces Patty with Charlie Brown’s little sister, Sally, includes delightful solos for Sally and Schroeder penned by Andrew Lippa, and integrates Schroeder and Snoopy into the ensemble numbers in a way that enhances the sense of comradery among the characters.

Yet it retains the magic of the Peanuts strips of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s on which the original was based. There was a definite sea change in the strip, as there was in American culture, in the late 1960’s, and the animated TV specials and films do a better job of capturing the Peanuts of that era.

Given that the characters are beloved and the material charming and bullet-proof, what sinks many productions of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is the gimmick of adults playing children, and, God forbid, an animal. This is where Staber and her cast really shine. I know that when I looked at the publicity still that arrived in my e-mail box my first thought was how unlike Schultz characters the actors looked, but still photos never capture stage magic. The moment they each walked on the stage they were Charlie Brown (Matthew W. Coviello) and Lucy (Christina Smith) and Linus (Zach Fenoff) and Sally (Erin M. White) and Snoopy (Mark “Monk” Schane-Lydon) and even Schroeder (Mike Meier). I say “even Schroeder” because Meier bears NO physical resemblance to Schulz’ Schroeder, but as soon as he folded his tall slender frame up into a tight little ball of concentration behind that baby Baby Grand he became the character for me.

Staber has her cast play these characters as very young children indeed. The Peanuts gang “aged” at different rates over the run of the strip, but none of them ever made it to double digits and the horrors of puberty** that lurk beyond. Here they are no older than six, which makes Linus’ blanket-dependent-thumb-sucking normal rather than icky, especially as played with wide-eyed innocence by Fenoff, and does very interesting things for the character of his big sister Lucy, as played by Smith.

I have always loved Schulz’ female characters. While he toyed with “girly-girls” – the original Patty, Violet, and Frieda with her naturally curly hair and “boneless” cat, Faron – they quickly fell by the wayside in favor of the strident Lucy, feisty Sally, and tomboy Peppermint Patty. The girls are the aggressive characters in Peanuts, although they are just as emotionally insecure as the boys.

Smith and Staber give us Schulz’ loud, crabby, obnoxious Lucy, but they also show us the very fragile little girl underneath all that bluster. Smith sings very well, but here she speaks and sings “like Lucy,” which means like her originator, Reva Rose, in a high, loud, nasal voice that is thankfully more amusing than it is painful to hear. Of course, girls’ voices change at puberty too, from a sound reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks to, with any luck, the dulcet soprano and alto tones of a mature woman. Smith and White are both trained singers with lovely voices, which you catch every now and then in the ensemble harmonies, but most of the time they speak, and sing, like squeaky little girls.

Sally Brown is a star-making role made for a star–in-the-making – Kristin Chenoweth won her first Tony playing her. White is just as sassy and captivating in her Ghent debut, and if I had a Tony, I’d give it to her. In fact I’d give one to each member of the cast, they are all so good! Sally’s jazzy show-stopper My New Philosophy, along with Schroeder’s Act I romp, Beethoven Day are clearly distinct from Gesner’s quieter, more introspective work, but the musical team, under the direction of Catherine Schane-Lydon, makes it all flow seamlessly.

Coviello is an optimistic, smiling, though occasionally off-key, Charlie Brown. Listening to his opening lines, and to the lyrics of The Doctor Is In, his number with Lucy at her Psychiatrist’s booth, you become aware of how deeply depressed poor old CB is:

“I’m not very handsome or clever, or lucid,
I’ve always been stupid at spelling and numbers.
I’ve never been much playing football ir baseball
Or stickball, or checkers, or marbles, or ping-pong

I’m usually awful at parties and dances,
I stand like a stick or I cough, or I laugh,
Or I don’t bring a present, or I spill the ice cream
Or I get so depressed that I stand and I scream…

Oh, how could there possibly be
One small person as thoroughly, totally, utterly
Blah as me.”

And yet Coviello and Staber give us reason for hope, as Lucy does for Charlie Brown. It is the universality of that inner sense of fear and failure that makes Schulz work so enduring and endearing.

I have saved the best for last. Mark Schane-Lydon is just superb as Snoopy. Joanne Maurer, whose costumes are never less than superb, has rigged up a clever backwards baseball cap with long floppy ears attached. That, combined with a dab of black greasepaint on the tip of the actor’s nose and his own uncanny canine sensibilities, transformed man to anthropomorphic beast with panache. Mark Schane-Lydon wiggles and waggles and sniffs and snuffs and lifts his leg and provides all manner of non-verbal commentary on the antics of the humans around him. (“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”) His rendition of Suppertime, the eleven o’clock number of the show and the only big, jazzy piece that Gesner penned, is a true show-stopper

Until I acquired my two dachshunds, I had never owned a scent hound. (Think about it, dachshunds are just beagles with really short legs.) My only personal experience with dogs had been with the big, affectionate breeds which have a strong desire to please their human companions, and so Snoopy had seemed thoroughly un-dog-like to me. NOW I get it! Now I understand the strong, independent personality and private inner life of these breeds. If my Cody took to wearing a red scarf and goggles and sitting on top of his crate growling, I would not be at all surprised. “Curse you, Red Baron! Curse you and your kind! Curse the evil that causes all this unhappiness!”

Bill Visscher has finessed the trick of rendering Schulz’ largely black and white world into vivid comic book colors in a set that is both clean and simple and quite complex in its detail. Everything works, but nothing better than Snoppy’s iconic dog house, which is a trompe l’œil masterpiece. The side that the audience sees is standard issue, but the back is rigged with steps and on top there is a cleverly concealed flat area that allows Mark Schane-Lydon to lounge or lunge with ease.

I cannot think of a person so curmudgeonly as not to fall instantly in love with this production. It is perfect from beginning to end and chock-full of stellar performances and wise words. This really is one that the whole family can enjoy together, so pack up grandma and the kids and buy your tickets NOW before this show sells out!

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown plays weekends May 20- June 5. The show runs two hours with one intermission and is suitable for the whole family. Friday and Saturday performances are at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15, Friends of the Playhouse $12 and, for this production, children under 12 years, $8. The Ghent Playhouse is located just off Route 66 on Town Hall Road, just south of the village of Ghent. Parking for the Playhouse is directly across Route 66, with handicap accessible places in front of the theater.

For reservations call 518-392-6264, leave your number and someone will call you back. For more information about the Ghent Playhouse go to www.ghentplayhouse.org

* Needless to say, when I auditioned for YAGMCB at age 16, I wanted to play Lucy. I mean, I grew up to be a theatre critic – I WANTED to play Lucy! Or I wanted to fall back on my depressive tendencies and recent experiences as a picked-on failure of a kid to play Charlie Brown. But nooooo, I got to play a dancing dog. I understand now what a great role I was given, but then I never got it and I shudder when I remember my dismal, Chekhovian take on the role.

** There is a play called Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Burt V. Royal, which Confetti Stage performed recently in this area, that takes the gang into adolescence. It is billed as an “unauthorized parody” and I, for one, have no desire to see it. But I do love the reveal that Peppermint Patty’s last name is York!

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