Dog Meets God Reviews

At last, I start a review thread. I'm interested as to what the critics will think. This show sounds interesting.

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HA! Yes, it's a palindrome.

The Times is up VERY early for them. It's Mixed:

"If nothing else, Bert V. Royal's scenario is a welcome antidote to the notion that the "Peanuts" gang provides merely a slice of American cuteness, perfect for Hallmark cards or Broadway musicals. For while there are plenty of winks to fans, the spirit of the play has as much in common with "Peanuts" as it does with the view of high school as a Darwinian hell (presented in movies like "Heathers" and "Mean Girls"). Turning Schulz's world into the hormone-infused disaster area imagined by overprotective parents and teenager movies makes for an occasionally funny joke, but it is a cheap one. And when Mr. Royal tries to blend serious, darker issues in with the shockers, he misses as badly as Charlie Brown does with the football.
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When Mr. Royal shifts his comedy toward melodrama, wading into more introspective themes that touch on free will, it's abrupt and unconvincing. "Do you ever feel like you're not a real person?" CB asks his sister. "That you're the product of someone's imagination and you can't think for yourself because you're really just like some creation and that somewhere there's people laughing every time you fall?"

Whatever happened to "Good grief"?"


http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/theater/reviews/16dog.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1134688291-IfD+IY9YyyeSfW2cie06Xw

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Broadway.com is Mixed:

"Written by Bert V. Royal, Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead was a hit at this year's Fringe Festival, where it won an excellence award for best overall production with a less high-profile cast. While the Peanuts-related riffs spark laughs for the first half hour or so, the play's humor then begins to flag. What would make a terrific Saturday Night Live sketch wears out its welcome over 90 minutes, especially when the play becomes earnest with a gay-romance plotline. Brokeback Mountain it ain't.
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Dog Sees God's premise is cute, and the references to the classic comic strip are clever for a while. I especially enjoyed when Tricia and Marcy imitated their teacher ("Woh woh. Woh woh woh wowoh woh.") and when the whole gang danced like the animated characters in the Peanuts TV specials. Unfortunately, Royal exhausts these jokes relatively quickly, and he switches gears by having Beethoven become involved with one of the other male characters. The gay storyline feels gimmicky and takes the play in a quasi-serious direction that feels forced. Royal fares much better when he plays off the comic strip than when he brings up the abuse Beethoven suffered as a child. Not surprisingly, director Trip Cullman isn't able to make a smooth transition from irreverent parody to Afterschool Special-esque gay play.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=522840

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Variety is Mixed:

"Theater purists never tire of carping disdainfully about the invasion of TV and film actors without solid stage experience. They must be poised to pounce on "Dog Sees God," its cast bios light on Shakespeare but bulging with such credits as "Lost," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "American Pie." But it turns out the assembly of hot young things is the prime asset of Bert V. Royal's protracted comedy sketch. Director Trip Cullman and a talented design team give punchy treatment to this unauthorized parody of the "Peanuts" gang tangling with teen-angst issues, but it rarely amounts to more than variations on a single joke.
Audiences who find lines like "Holy ****ing ****!!! You're a homo, Charlie Brown!!!" real thigh-slappers likely will eat this up, finding subversiveness in its slender premise and profundity in the shallow sensitivity with which it explores Big Questions. The fevered hit status accorded the show when it played in a far less starry production at the 2004 New York Intl. Fringe Festival indicates a receptive public exists, most of them probably still young enough to be nostalgic for the high school hormonal rampages and identity explorations played out onstage.
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Royal certainly knows his "Peanuts" and has a good ear for teen dialogue, but it all boils down to jokes threaded together in a flimsy dramaturgical blueprint.

The playwright tries in the final scene to make a case for CB struggling to become a real person, instead of feeling "just like some 'creation' and that somewhere there's people laughing every time you fail."

The challenge of seeking an identity, of being an autonomous, thinking, feeling adult rather than a preprogrammed cutout, seems to be the theme here. But this homage-cum-deconstruction of Schulz's sweetly humanistic world of unanswered questions is never developed enough to take "Dog Sees God" beyond the limited boundaries of broad parody.


http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117929122?categoryid=1265&cs=1

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Newark Star-Ledger is Mixed-to-Negative:

"It's unclear from the downbeat story's indeterminate tone whether Royal riffs off "Peanuts" just for smarty-pants laughter or wants to say something serious regarding how ugly adolescent life may have become in recent years.

Whatever, the characters have foul tongues and really bad attitudes that contrast with the quaint little people everyone knows from Charles M. Schulz's beloved comic.

Suggesting an R-rated "Saturday Night Live" sketch extended to 80 minutes, "Dog Sees God" has been nimbly staged by Trip Cullman with an eye toward mimicking the various poses struck by the strip's kids. His eight-member ensemble of bright young actors mostly has few stage credits and are known best for appearances on TV series like "Lost" and movies like "American Pie."


http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1134713550120340.xml&coll=1

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They're mostly how I felt on the show.

It's good, BUT...

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Daily News is Mixed:

"For copyright reasons, the names have been changed, quite literally, to protect the innocent. Charlie Brown is referred to here as C.B. The piano-playing Schroeder is now Beethoven. All of Schulz's characters do drugs and are sexually voracious.

Ultimately, this is a 10-minute skit. That it remains amusing for longer than that is due to its excellent cast, especially Kelli Garner and Ari Graynor as two strung-out chicks."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater/story/375139p-318785c.html



Curtainup is Positive:

"Royal's pallindrome titled first play has landed at the Century Center near Union Square. It has a new director and cast and probably considerably snazzier production values (a guess, since I didn't see the Fringe version). Its edgy humor seems to be fully intact, along with its take on identity confusion , life and the hereafter. The characters are easily identifiable with the Peanuts crowd yet with a distinctly original or "Royal" touch.
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The opening letter-monologue paves the way for the appearance of CB's friends, all as Les so aptly put it "crafted with lawyerly precision to avoid trespassing while making their identities clear to us." The way Royal builds on the foundation of Charles Schulz's iconic comic strip actually results in a parody that's also a stand-alone play apt to resonate even with anyone belonging to that small population segment unfamiliar with Peanuts.

Trip Cullman keeps the energy pumped up sufficiently to avoid having the genuinely funny scenes from being overwhelmed by the detours into the melodramatic and grim finale."

http://www.curtainup.com/dogseesgod.html

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