Review - You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown - Stratford Festival

✭✭✩✩✩

by Clark Gesner, directed by Donna Feore

Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

May 29-October 27, 2012

“You’re a Dull Show, Charlie Brown”

Those who may have thought that You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown was an odd choice for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season had their worst fears confirmed when it opened May 29th. The musical in its present overblown form really doesn’t belong on the stage of North America’s largest classical theatre company. Its a version sure to displease parent and child alike.

The musical presents a paradox. Who exactly is its audience? Peanuts (1950-2000), Charles Schulz’s beloved cartoon series on which the musical is based, may have had six-year-old children and a dog as its characters but its appeal was always to adults. What six-year-old knows about the Red Baron, Socrates or the Appassionata Sonata – all referred to in the cartoons and the show? The fun of the cartoons was to see six-year-olds pondering questions of art (Schroeder) and philosophy (Linus) or, like Charlie, labouring under a general existential malaise: “Should I act or should I not and what difference will it make either way?” Is it adults or children who find humour in Lucy’s sign “Psychiatric Help 5¢”?

The musical has no plot. It is simply a series of short, inconsequential vignettes. Adults will realize inconclusiveness as Schultz’s style and note many familiar themes from the series – kite flying, baseball, Valentines, the little red-headed girl, etc. Kids, however, ignorant of this background will likely find it boring. And, indeed, what were charming musings in four panels of a comic strip, turn out to provide little or no drama on stage.

Now that it is 2012 the question is what child has even heard of Peanuts? Programming this musical is a case of adults mistakenly assuming that children will somehow share their nostalgia for a relic of their past. It was no surprise that the biggest reaction to recreations of iconic images from the series – like Snoopy in his aviator helmet, red scarf flying, sitting atop his doghouse – got the biggest response from the adults, not the children. Snoopy is as much in the past for children today as World War I.

Clark Gesner’s original musical ran for 1597 performances and was praised for the simplicity of its staging. Andrew Lippa’s 1999 revision of the musical with Michael Meyer’s rewriting of the dialogue ran for 149 performances and was criticized for its over-elaborate production. The Stratford Festival has chosen the 1999 revision and has run into the same problems. There’s no question which version is superior. The original is unpretentious and low-key and thus more in keeping with the tone of Schulz’s cartoons. The revision keeps striving for a kind of showstopping grandeur completely opposed to the simplicity and everydayness of the characters and their stories.

Director and choreographer Donna Feore’s production seems to be anxious itself that it is dealing with an unknown to today’s children. Therefore, to make the show relevant for them, she has Snoopy play a video game designed by Dylan Woodley called “Goodbye Kitty”, a race between Lego-built jalopies, which is projected on the back screen of the stage. She also has the cast break more than once into hip-hop dance routines. As she says in her “Director’s Notes”, “I have choreographed in a style I hope our younger audiences will relate to.” She succeeds with both. The video games and hip-hop moves were the elements that got the biggest response from the young people in the audience, but, of course, they have absolutely nothing to do with source material. If you’re going to ignore the source material and its essential nature, why choose it in the first place? There is certainly a lot more up to date material out there that kids know much better.

The result is that the direction and the design are at odds with each other. In trying to evoke nostalgia in the adults and hold the interest of the kids, the production satisfies neither. Set designer Michael Gianfrancesco has attempted to recreate the vivid colours of Op and Pop Art of the 1960s but his set looks more like background for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In than anything to do with Peanuts. Gianfrancesco is caught in the dilemma of how to capture the simplicity of the series but still provide enough production values to justify ticket prices equal to those of 42nd Street and The Pirates of Penzance. In one example of overkill, he replaces Lucy’s iconic Psychiatric Help booth, which in the series looked like a homemade lemonade stand, with a molded orange plastic booth like a theme-park information desk with the sign, not scrawled in a child’s writing, but cut out precisely on a lit plastic arch. Another time a molded plastic school bus arrives stage left whose only purpose is to take the actors to stage right.

Video designer Sean Nieuwenhuis provides continuous projections on the back screen of the stage, which, shaped as a rectangle with rounded corners, looks like a huge old-fashioned TV screen. One of his bizarre ideas is to have blank cartoon speech and thought bubbles appear over the characters’ heads to remind us that the show is based on newspaper cartoons. Rather than adding to the production values, the effect is that of cheap television kiddie shows where live actors perform in front of a rear-projected background.

At least costume designer Dana Osborne has tried to recreate the outfits of the five human characters. Snoopy, however, seems to have stumped her. He looks mostly like a man in oversized pajamas and the two-tone hair makes him seem more like a punk rocker than a dog.

It’s a shame such an excellent cast is trapped in such a pointless show. Ken James Stewart has done great work in small parts at the Shaw Festival over the years and it’s a pity he was never given more chances to sing in his smooth high baritone. Stewart can’t turn off being a good actor so that his portrayal of Charlie Brown’s general depression is not funny as in the comic strips, but genuinely worrisome and makes us wish for a more satisfying resolution than the show provides.

Erica Peck is great as Lucy and has her character’s egocentricity and domineering personality down perfectly. Amy Wallis is suitably pert as Charlie’s sister Sally, and Kevin Yee as Lucy’s brother Linus delivers his lines as a precocious pedant with charming insouciance. He’s also a fine dancer and executes with panache the balletic and kickboxing moves Feore gives him. It’s just hard to see how that kind of physicality squares with thumb-sucking and need for his security blanket.

Feore gives Andrew Broderick a similar problem as Schroeder. She allows him a jivy way of moving and speaking and he’s the main man for hip-hop dancing in the cast. But, we wonder, how does that tally exactly with his character’s dedication to classical pianism and Beethoven?

Then there is Stephen Patterson as Snoopy. With a laugh sometimes like Homer Simpson, sometimes like Fred Flintstone, he seem like an adult rather than one of the kids, much less a dog. Patterson has lots of energy but doesn’t even try to give a sense of innocent playfulness to any of Snoopy’s many fantasies.

In trying to nurture adults’ nostalgia yet pander to children’s present interests, to create an air of childlike simplicity but with high tech means, this production of Charlie Brown constantly falls between two stools. Adults tend to think that the way to get young people interested in theatre is to gives them shows that speak to them on “their level” and teach them “valuable lessons”. In realty, the best way of getting children interested in theatre is to expose them to great theatre of any kind. If you want children to appreciate quality, just give them the chance to experience it.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.

2012-05-31

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown