Evaluate: Stage West mines beloved sketch Charlie Brown in light-hearted musical

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Good grief, Charlie Brown; after greater than 70 years, you’re nonetheless one of many world’s most endearing losers.

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Charlie Brown is the principle character in Charles M. Schulz’s sketch Peanuts which first appeared in 1950. On the time of Schulz’s dying in 2000, Charlie and his pals had a readership of greater than 355 million in 75 nations and had been translated into 21 languages. From the early four-panel comedian strips, Peanuts grew into books, tv specials, motion pictures and, in 1967, into an off-Broadway musical that ran for 1,597 performances and was revived in New York in 1971, 1999 and 2016 and has loved 4 U.S. excursions.

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Charlie, his youthful sister Sally, his piano-playing good friend Schroeder, his arch nemesis Lucy and her youthful brother Linus, and Charlie’s beagle Snoopy have taken up residence at Stage West for the summer time in a manufacturing that’s as charming as it’s slick and glossy.

The musical, just like the sketch, is actually only a sequence of vignettes. There is no such thing as a actual story, simply observations Schulz made about human nature as seen by means of the eyes of youngsters. The characters are all one-dimensional mirrors to assist us choose our personal behaviours, emotions and philosophies of life.

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Charlie (Jeremy LaPalme) is the everyman who simply desires to handle a profitable workforce, rating a landing, preserve his kite from getting tangled in a tree, get a particular somebody to note him, get acknowledged with playing cards on particular events and be motivated to finish a job. LaPalme provides his Charlie only a trace of a clumsy gait and unhappy sack expression plus some hesitation in his speech. To his credit score, LaPalme doesn’t push the envelope, which is why it’s really easy to see one’s personal failings however discover hope in Charlie’s admirable persistence.

Lucy (Jessica Jones) might by no means be the queen she goals of turning into, however she’s actually destined to be the CEO of a giant company the place her bossy, opinionated, forceful, egotistical behaviour shall be admired. Jones holds nothing again in the way in which she marches across the stage, bellows at Charlie and Linus and tries to get Schroeder’s romantic consideration. It’s a bombastic efficiency in one of the best of all potential methods. Jones has the singing voice to match Lucy’s persona, hitting excessive and low notes with equal gusto.

Schroeder (Caulin Moore) is the artist whose artwork is his obsession, which, in Schroeder’s case, is 18th-century German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. It’s hilarious to see Moore all hunched all the way down to play on the toy piano, and to attempt desperately not to have a look at Jones as she tries to woo him. When Schroeder will get his huge quantity, Beethoven Day, Moore is like an energized bunny.

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In relation to authority, Sally (Sarah Gibbons) takes no prisoners. She’ll argue with academics over the grades they provide her, confounding them together with her convoluted logic, and Gibbons exudes confidence in her each stance and, particularly in her track My New Philosophy, the place she commandeers what everybody else thinks.

Snoopy (Jesse Drwiega) is a dreamer, as he reveals in his imagined battle with The Purple Baron, who, in one of many extra impressed twists of the manufacturing, is the little chicken Woodstock. Snoopy additionally loves his meals, and Drwiega goes for the gold with Snoopy’s huge quantity Suppertime.

Linus (Jesse Weafer) is the thinker with a safety blanket who overanalyzes every thing, as Weafer reveals in The E-book Report on Peter Rabbit quantity. Weafer can be the present’s choreographer, and he turns Linus’s track My Blanket and Me into one of many present’s greatest manufacturing numbers the place each forged member will get a safety blanket colour-coordinated with their wardrobe.

As assured and gifted as these six triple-threat actors could also be, the true Good Man of this manufacturing is JP Thibodeau, who directed and designed the present. His little touches are in all places, from using video screens to the outsized set items. His present is sort of a sketch coming to life, and it’s what this present calls for. Kudos particularly to his staging of Sally and Snoopy’s rabbit chase, which performs homage to every thing from James Bond and The Pink Panther to Jaws.

You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown is a present for the kid that also lives inside each grownup, and simply wants somewhat coaxing to come back out to play, and Thibodeau has created a most pleasant little playpen. Charlie and the Peanuts gang are at Stage West till Sept. 2.

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