Sunday, January 14, 2001

Music, acting illustrate Peanuts'

By MORRIS SULLIVAN
NEWS-JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT

DAYTONA BEACH — Seaside Music Theater's latest production, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" opened Friday night at SMT Downtown with a rollicking storyline that should appeal to both children and adults.

With book, music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, the musical comedy is based on the comic strip, "Peanuts," by Charles M. Schulz, bringing to life Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy and the other cultural icons from one of the longest- running, best-loved comic strips in history.

The staging of Seaside's "Charlie Brown" is simple and sparse. The shallow stage forces the action to appear flat and rectangular, with a little perspective created by an upstage platform. Two set pieces, Snoopy's doghouse and a multipurpose bench, remain on stage the entire time. Both are larger-than- life, effectively reducing the proportions of the cast to kid-size. Adding to that illusion, Brian J. O'Keefe's costumes help create a "boxy" look to the cast. Appropriately, the overall effect converts the proscenium to comic strip dimensions.

Completing the transformation, a series of revolving panels cleverly change the backdrop from one scene to the next; those conversions are choreographed with actors' entrances and exits, so that the scenes flow smoothly from one to another.

The production doesn't hit its stride until about halfway through the first act. This is partly because of uneven pacing, but largely because the beginning scenes of the play resemble one of Schulz's daily strips, in which a brief vignette must build quickly to a punch line. Consequently, it takes several such scenes before the three-dimension al adults on stage can be mentally transposed into the two-dimensional kids that populate the "Peanuts" universe.

Soon enough, however, the cast begins to define the trademark mannerisms of the strip's characters. The show comes to life when, for example, Ben Franklin sits at his tiny grand piano, flawlessly mimicking Schroeder's hunched- over Beethovenesque posture, while Lucy (Liz George) harasses him in her typical fashion. With direction from Julia Davidson Truilo, the cast clearly works hard to help the audience believe that they have become the characters from the script.

The effect is often impressive, such as when Jeremy Benton's Snoopy lurks on top of the doghouse, fantasizing he's a ferocious jungle beast; one can virtually see his ears and nose lengthening to beastly proportions.

As in the strip, Charlie Brown mainly serves as a straight man for the rest of the often-bizarre characters. Billy Taylor makes a likeable and believable Brown. His voice is polished, and it's easy to identify with him as he struggles to maintain his humor while coping with life's little traumas.

Some of the music is little more than jazzy underscoring for fairly straightforward monologues. The score draws from everything from Beethoven to "Home on the Range." Liz George has the good fortune of singing two of the play's most interesting songs, "Schroeder" and "Little Known Facts." The former layers Lucy's romantic ranting onto the "Moonlight Sonata." In the latter, she informs Linus that, among other things, sparrows grow up into eagles and we eat them at Thanksgiving.

Choreographer Chuck Hoenes adds sparkle to numbers like "The Baseball Game," which becomes a delightfully chaotic arabesque. Also, Hoenes and Truilo conspire to create some memorable moments with Rob Cygan. As Linus, Cygan delivers the child's philosophical musings with his thumb in his mouth and his ubiquitous blanket, then uses the same scrap of blue flannel as a substitute for a varied assortment of props including a burlesque dancer's boa, a vampire's cape and a catcher's mitt.

About an hour and 40 minutes with intermission, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" is short enough to hold the attention of kids. No doubt, they will be delighted by Snoopy's antics and the baseball-field chaos, and should laugh at the trials and tribulations of school lunchtime, blanket-separation anxiety, sibling rivalry, puppy love and other childhood themes. However, the play, like the comic strip, wasn't conceived as a work for children; while the characters are kids, their interactions serve as a metaphor for adult life.

The result, then, is that the grownups in the audience will understand that the frustrations, conflicts and insecurities of day-to-day adulthood are simply an extension of their playground years. We can laugh at and sympathize with these "kids."

Now showing

What: "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" When: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays until Feb. 3; 2 p.m. matinees today, Jan. 21, 25, 27, 28 and Feb. 1 and 4.

Cost: Tickets, $20-$22. Call (904) 252-6200.

Where: SMT Downtown, 176 N. Beach St., Daytona Beach.