With the deep connection between Charles Schulz’s and his world of Peanuts and Sonoma County, one might expect a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown to be running locally in perpetuity. Instead, local theater companies dutifully trot it out every couple of years to give local folks the opportunity to visit with live-action representations of their favorite comic strip characters. This year, Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company is hosting the Peanuts gang with a production running through September 15.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown began its life as a series of songs featuring the Peanuts characters by Clark Gesner. After receiving permission from Schulz, Gesner produced a concept album from which he then developed a stage adaptation. It opened off-Broadway in 1967 and enjoyed a healthy four-year run. 

The late nineties brought revisions, a revival, and a brief Broadway run, noted by the character of Patty being dropped for Sally, and the addition of new music and songs by Andrew Lippa (The Addams Family Musical).  

There’s no plot per se, just a series of vignettes featuring Charlie Brown (Anderson Templeton), Lucy (Kaela Mariano), Linus (Tyler Ono), Sally (Nicole Stanley), Schroeder (Chase Thompson), and, of course, Snoopy (Brady Voss).

The sense of the comic strip coming alive was supported with a three-panel comic strip backdrop and simple, colorful set pieces by Eddy Hansen and spot on recreations of the expected character clothing by Donnie Frank. Projections by Nick Lovato also added a level of colorful cartoon enhancement. 

The vignettes themselves were of familiar Peanuts moments: Charlie Brown pining for the Little Red-Headed Girl, Lucy pining for Schroeder, Schroeder pining for Beethoven, Linus pining for his blanket, Sally pining for better grades, and Snoopy pining for his dinner.  The kite-eating tree, the psychiatrist booth, the baseball game, and the Red Baron also make appearances. There are also some familiar Peanuts dance moves, as choreographer Karen Miles has the cast joyously recreating the classic “choreography” from the Charlie Brown Christmas TV special.  

The genius of Peanuts was Schulz’s ability to work philosophical questions, social commentary, and psychological issues into a comic strip that could also appeal to children. It’s the same challenge presented by mounting a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It’s not really a children’s show. While it’s a show for adults (and originally performed by adults), you have to do something to keep the tykes in attendance attentive.

Director Elly Lichenstein appears to have sought a solution to this dilemma through casting. Her cast is a mixture of teens and adults and while it’s nice to see some of the area’s most talented young performers get a shot at larger roles, they lacked the gravitas more experienced performers might have provided. Ono’s Linus has a wonderful bit of dance work with “Me and My Blanket” but his more philosophical moments came off as too juvenile, lacking the sense of irony Schulz often instilled in his characters. Thompson captures Schroeder’s love and passion for music, but his frequent expressions of anger were out of step and a bit over the top.     

The girls come off best with Stanley perfectly capturing Sally’s neediness and tendency to scapegoat while Mariano fully embodied Lucy’s alpha femaleness (and crabbiness). 

Voss played Snoopy for the kids which, based on the reactions from the younger folks in attendance, worked well, but I missed a sense of the character’s intelligence. Snoopy is often the smartest “person” in the room, but silliness reigned supreme here.   

Templeton exuded Charlie Brown’s lack of self-confidence, but that anxiety seemed very real during his musical moments. He was clearly struggling with some of the songs, and his already thin voice disappeared on occasion, as was the case with several other cast members.

The curious decision to not mic the cast while having a four-piece band onstage did not serve this production well. The band, under the direction of Janis Dunson Wilson, did not overpower the singing and handled the musical moments quite well. The cast simply did not receive the vocal amplification support they should have in a musical.

The cast is clearly giving their all, and that effort makes many moments in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown the theatrical equivalent of opening up a dog-eared copy of a Peanuts compendium and paging your way through a pleasant trip down memory lane.   

‘You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown’ runs through Sept 15 in the Condiotti Experimental Theater at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. Fri-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $16 – $42. 707.588.3400. spreckelsonline.com 

Photos by Jeff Thomas

This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.