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The BEGINNING

On October 2, 1950, at the height of the American postwar celebration — an era when being unhappy was an antisocial rather than a personal emotion — a 27-year-old Minnesota cartoonist named Charles M. Schulz introduced to the funny papers a group of children who told one another the truth:
"I have deep feelings of depression," a round-faced kid named Charlie Brown said to an imperious girl named Lucy in an early strip. "What can I do about it?"
"Snap out if it," advised Lucy.

This was something new in the newspaper comic strip. At mid-century the comics were dominated by action and adventure, vaudeville and melodrama, slapstick and gags. Schulz dared to use his own quirks — a lifelong sense of alienation, insecurity and inferiority — to draw the real feelings of his life and time. He brought a spare pen line, Jack Benny timing and a subtle sense of humor to taboo themes such as faith, intolerance, depression, loneliness, cruelty and despair. His characters were contemplative. They spoke with simplicity and force. They made smart observations about literature, art, classical music, theology, medicine, psychiatry, sports and the law.

They explained America the way Huckleberry Finn does: Americans believe in friendship, in community, in fairness, but in the end, we are dominated by our apartness, our individual isolation — an isolation that went very deep, both in Schulz and in his characters.

Charlie Brown was something new in comics: a real person, with a real psyche and real problems. The reader knew him, knew his fears, sympathized with his sense of inferiority and alienation. When Charlie Brown first confessed, "I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel," he was speaking for people everywhere in Eisenhower's America, especially for a generation of solemn, precociously cynical college students, who "inhabited a shadow area within the culture," the writer Frank Conroy recalled. They were the last generation to grow up, as Schulz had, without television, and they read Charlie Brown's utterances as existential statements — comic strip koans about the human condition.

On the one hand, the action in "Peanuts" conveyed a very American sense that things could be changed, or at least modified, by sudden violence. By getting good and mad you could resolve things. But, at the same time, Charlie Brown reminded people, as no other cartoon character had, of what it was to be vulnerable, to be human.

By David Michaelis

YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
Based on The Comic Strip "Peanuts" by
Charles M. Schulz
Book, Music and Lyrics by
Clark Gesner
Additional Dialogue by Michael Mayer
Additional Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa
Original Direction for this (revised) version of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" by Michael Mayer
Originally Produced in New York by
Arthur Whitelaw and Gene Persson

PRODUCTION HISTORY:

YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN (Revised) played on Broadway in 1999. It is a fresh approach to the all-time 1966 classic. Sally Brown joins Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder and Snoopy in this version. Two new songs, Beethoven Day and My New Philosophy, are added to the wonderful numbers My Blanket and Me, The Kite, The Baseball Game, Little Known Facts, Suppertime and Happiness.

The production received 4 Tony nominations for:
Best Revival of Musical
Best Director
Best Featured Actress
Best Featured Actor

It won 2 TONY AWARDS for
Featured Actress, Kristin Chenoweth as Sally
Featured Actor, Rogar Bart as Snoopy.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE SHOW AND THIS REVISED VERSION?

In 1998 the authors and producers of the original 1966 musical show, YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN, decided it was time for a major revival of the work in a Broadway theatre. The idiomatic, intimate innocence of the characters that is presented in the original stage production has been maintained, but a new perspective has been added by emphasizing the insatiable insouciance of the characters that was held in check in the original. The new cast of six characters includes Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Snoopy and Sally Brown (she replaces Patty.)

The original twelve songs all remain in this version, and two new songs: Beethoven Day (Schroeder & Company) and My New Philosophy (Sally with Schroeder) have been added. The two melodramas, Lucy's Queen Lucy and Snoopy's Red Baron, retain their spoken dialogue but have completely new underscoring music. The pantomime Rabbit Chasing has an entirely new musical score. All the music and dialogue for the show has been reworked; it is not just the same thing with two new songs. All the show's incidental music, dance music, vocal arrangements and orchestrations are brand new. The signature simple waltz tune (instrumental only, never sung), used to open the original show and as a musical bridge between scenes is the only music from the original that is not used in the revised version. Instead, all of the incidental musical bridge passages now relate to the characters and the principal songs associated with them. And there are 465 more measures of music in this version. The entire show looks and sounds newly minted.

This version has an entirely new sound, musically distinct from the original. It is true theatre chamber music at its most inventive, orchestrated for an ensemble of five players. The orchestrations move the feeling of the work from the intimate parlor setting of the original version, into the more public arena of the theatre proper, while maintaining the basic charm of the original music. Adding bass and percussion to the piano has broadened the rhythmic pulse of the music and sharpened its edge. These instruments also allow room for a more flexible and overtly dramatic underscoring of the staging of the musical numbers. The two solo lines of the orchestration, woodwind and string, bring wonderful shades of color and texture to the sound. The string part is for viola doubling on violin, the wind part is for one player principally doubling flute, clarinet and alto saxophone. All five players double on several instruments which significantly widens the palette of color available in the orchestration. At one point (in Snoopy's song Snoopy) all the players are asked to perform a brief passage on Kazoos!

Synopsis

A program note says that the time of the action is "an average day in the life of Charlie Brown." It really is just that, a day made up of little moments picked from all the days of Charlie Brown, from Valentine's Day to the baseball season, from wild optimism to utter despair, all mixed in with the lives of his friends (both human and non-human) and strung together on the string of a single day, from bright uncertain morning to hopeful starlit evening.

It seems to start off all right. After some brief comments on the nature of his character by his friends, Charlie Brown is swept into their center by a rousing tribute of only slightly qualified praise, in the song You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. He is then left to his own musings as he eats his lunch on the school playground, complicated unbearably by the distant presence of his true love, the "little redheaded girl," who is always just out of sight.

True love also seems to be the only unmanageable element in Lucy's solid life, which we discover as we watch her try to bulldoze her way through to her boyfriend's sensitive, six-year-old musician's heart, in Schroeder. The little scenes then begin to accumulate, and we learn that Lucy's little brother, Linus, is thoughtful about many things but fanatical when it comes to the matter of his blanket; that Patty is sweet and utterly innocent; and that Charlie Brown's dog spends much if not most of his time thinking of being something else-a gorilla, a jungle cat, perhaps a handsome trophy or two-but that mostly his life is a pleasant one-Snoopy.

The events continue to trickle on. Linus enjoys a private time with his most favorite thing of all -My Blanket and Me, Lucy generously bothers to inform him of her ambition-of-the-moment, to become a queen with her won queendom, and then Charlie Brown lurches in for still another bout with his own friendly enemy -The Kite.

Valentine's Day comes and goes with our hero receiving not one single valentine, which brings him to seek the temporary relief of Lucy's five-cent psychiatry booth-The Doctor Is In. We then watch as four of our friends go through their individual struggles with the homework assignment of writing a hundred word essay of "Peter Rabbit" in The Book Report.

Act Two roars in with Snoopy lost in another world atop his dog house. As a World War One flying ace he does not bring down the infamous Red Baron in today's battle but we know that someday, someday he will.

The day continues. We learn of the chaotic events of the Very Little League's Baseball Game as Charlie Brown writes the news to his pen pal. Lucy is moved to conduct a personal survey to find out just how crabby she really is, and all the group gathers for a misbegotten rehearsal of a song they are to sing in assembly.

It is suppertime, and Snoopy once more discovers what wild raptures just the mere presence of his full supper dish can send him into. And then it is evening. The gathered friends sing a little about their individual thoughts of happiness and then they go off, leaving Lucy to make a very un-Lucy-like gesture: she tells Charlie Brown what a good man he is.

None of the cast is actually six years old. And they don't really look like Charles 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

Song List

ACT I
ACT II
From the Revival Version
  • My New Philosophy
  • Bows

    • A review of the original Broadway production

    A CurtainUp Review
    YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN
    Based on the comic strip "Peanuts" by Charles M. Schulz
    Book and lyrics by Clark Gesner
    Music, musical supervision, arrangements and additional material by Andrew Lippa
    Directed by Michael Mayer
    Music director: Kimberly Grigsby
    With Kristin Chenoweth (Sally), Stanley Wayne Mathis (Schroeder), B.D. Wong (Linus), Roger Bart (Snoopy), Ilana Levine (Lucy) and Anthony Rapp (Charlie Brown).
    Set design: David Gallo
    Costume design: Michael Krass
    Lighting design: Kenneth Posner
    Sound design: Brian Ronan;
    Orchestrator: Michael Gibson
    Choreography: Jerry Mitchell
    Ambassador 219 W. 49th Street
    Reviewed by Elyse Sommer based on 2/10/99 performance

    My companion at You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown was 5 1/2 year-old Jack Sommer. His unreserved enthusiasm for all six members of the Peanuts gang and his open-mouthed wonder at each scene shift gave a giant boost to my own enjoyment.

    The few easy-to-eat-and-quiet-to-unwrap snacks I'd packed with my notebook for fidgety moments proved totally unnecessary. While some of the humor that had the adult audience laughing went over his head, it didn't keep him from declaring at the end: "I liked this show so much that I want to see it again." (At $75 a pop for orchestra seats, even the most doting parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents aren't likely to indulge such wishes -- but not to worry, there's a CD from the show slated for release in about a month will have to suffice).

    To my question at intermission about a favorite character, Jack unhesitatingly declared "I liked them all." That included crabby, buttinsky Lucy who, asked the same question would undoubtedly have said "me!" Still, the idea of a play date with Sally a.k.a. Kristin Chenoweth seemed especially appealing. Small wonder! Chenoweth, with Little Orphan Annie curls and the voice of a pint-sized Miss Adelaide is surely one of the most irresistible moppets to dance onto a Broadway stage in a long while. While Sally is the most 100% kid character of the sextet, there were no questions about grown-up actors playing any of these little folks (the name Charles M. Schulz used for his comic strip before it became immortalized as "Peanuts"). What about the Snoopy a.k.a. Roger Bart? Without dog mask or costume, Jack bought Snoopy's dogginess lick, bark and bone. In fact, he thought it would be great fun to have his favorite miniature Schnauzer, Busby meet this beagle.

    So do you have to be a child or have a child in tow to enjoy director Michael Mayer's re-staged, re-written reprise of the 1967 Off-Broadway hit? Since its book is as weighty as those mini-books about love and friendship found in bookstore gift departments, does this music-animated cartoon really deliver the big bang of a Broadway show?

    If you're going to start comparing it to The Lion King, good grief, no . But if you appreciate a musical that isn't excessively miked, and overly glitzy, you could do a lot worse than spend two hours with The Browns -- Charlie, Lucy and Sally -- and Linus, Schroeder and Snoopy.

    With the capable Mr. Mayer at the helm the re-staging and rewriting is extensive without extinguishing the original revue's win-your-heart intimacy. Topping the list of assets Mayer has brought to the show is the transformation of the original's Patty (a composite of all the girls except Lucy) into Charlie's scrappy kid sister Sally and the inspired casting of Kristin Chenoweth. Mayer's other casting choices are also good, especially Roger Bart as Snoopy and B. D. "M. Butterfly" Wong as Linus. While Anthony Rapp was out sick on the night we went to the Ambassador, Doan Mackenzie proved himself a most satisfactory standby. (As noted in our 2/07 etcetera column, this season's devilishly insidious strain of flu has forced even some of the gamest show-must-go-on actors to bed. Thus, good understudies are more crucial than ever. Fortunately, You're A Good Man boasts three standbys with each prepared to play multiple roles.).

    Andrew Lippa's additions to existing songs as well as two new musical standouts, "My New Philosophy" and "Beethoven Day" add to the what-a-good-idea revisions. Also not to be overlooked are the behind the scenes stars of this production: David Gallo, Michael Krass and Kenneth Posner. Gallo once again proves his knack for witty and apt cutout sets. A yellow bus and a big chartreuse couch which effectively cuts the actors down to the size of their characters are just some of the magic marker colored props wheeled on and off the stage. Oh, yes, there's also Snoopy doghouse which the insouciant beagle at one point pilots to a delightful ride in the sky. (see picture at top) Everything is splendidly lit by Kenneth Posner and Michael Krass's just-so costumes underscore the set's bright palette.

    The colorful staging was by no means lost on my junior co-critic. He seemed particularly enthralled when Snoopy's Act 2 dog dance seagued into an Al Jolson "Mammy" number with the proscenium suddenly a flashing marquee -- the evening's most Broadway-like number.

    Unlike Jack, I can't say that I liked everything about You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown or that I'd be inclined to see it a second time. I wasn't completely sold on the kid's persona of Lucy (a somewhat disconcerting Lily Tomlin look-alike) and Schroeder and there were a few sketches that made me wish the next and better one would hurry up and begin. On the whole, the show's charm and bounce made these minor quibbles.


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