You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown to Receive Off-Broadway Revival — Page 2

Yikes, this truly is bad, in a "Why did my friend bring me to her elementary school son's school musical?" way. A youth revival of this show could work... but these kids are way too young. They can't handle the (surprisingly difficult) score, and were clearly not helped by the clunky direction ( it seems like they were given a lot of line readings as opposed to actual direction).

there is an intermission. I think it ran about 2 hrs

This registers a zero on the interest meter for both of us.

ashk8177 said: "Considering the poor reviews on here, this may not be the best place to ask this- but if anyone wants to go in my place tonight I will give away my one ticket for free. PM if you are interested. "



You're that desperate to avoid seeing it just because of the reviews on here?

if I were you I would just cancel the babysitter and eat the cost of the ticket.

i haven't and won't see this production but I saw a local high school production of this show earlier this year (in Michigan where I live) and I just don't think it's a great show (especially for kids). I've never seen it done professionally and didn't really get it.

"I saw a local high school production of this show earlier this year (in Michigan where I live) and I just don't think it's a great show (especially for kids)..."

It was never a show to be performed by kids; thinking that it could be, merely because the characters look like children, is plain old fuzzy thinking. The Peanuts strip was always about the contrast of children thinking and talking like adults, specifically adults of a certain semi-neurotic mindset popularly spoofed in the 1960s.

And then, of course, the show as licensed now is incredibly unsophisticated, one-level, and just unwitty; it's a very far cry from the original piece (which was sophisticated, multi-dimensional, and full of wit).

Yes, it is. And that's really sad.

The revised version maintains the basic structure of the original, but batters it over the head with redundant additional instrumentation/arrangements, interpolated songs that don't fit the tone of the show (or the rest of the score), and the addition of a character so over the top and id-driven, she utterly destroys the rest of the cast and the balance of the piece. I'm not saying that Sally Brown isn't an entertaining creation - she is - but it's like introducing a marauding elephant into a room of glass animals.

As Walter Kerr wrote of the original, what makes it work is its effortlessness; the revised version is nothing but effort. That said, I do fear that most modern audiences, from a demand for effects over substance, would be bored at a straightforward production of the original version.

The original is also of a time before the somewhat more bombastic, neurotic interpretation of the characters that the television specials cemented as canonical. The comic was a much more quiet, whimsical world than the TV specials, and when the musical was written, it reflected the style of the comic, not the specials. The revised musical is bigger, louder, meaner and faster in the same way that the Charlie Brown Christmas special, while certainly not hyperactive, is a more lively affair than the comic usually is.