January 9, 2006

vanloan@nyconstage.org


Dog Sees God has garnered many awards in its travels from the 2003 Fringe including a GLAAD Media award. It is essentially a comic send-up of the beloved Charles M. Schultz comic strip Peanuts (it should be noted early on that the parody is not authorized by the Schultz estate). The author, Burt V. Royal, has envisioned the Peanuts gang as they might be in the later stages of teenage adolescence. Charlie Brown (now CB) has come out of the closet and fallen in love with Schroeder (now Beethoven). Lucy is in jail for arson. Everyone has raging hormones and is experimenting with drugs. It's all very clever and irreverent. But does it work?

Actually, quite a bit does. Mr. Royal takes the angst of today's adolescence and places it squarely on the shoulders of the iconic innocence of Mr. Shultz's characters. Making Linus a teenage stoner and Pigpen an obsessive-compulsive neat freak set up some very funny situations. Unfortunately, the author over plays his hand and by the last half hour the play has spun out of control with a teenager suicide and a violent gang attack. Trip Cullman's direction tries hard to maneuver around these potholes but ultimately he is done in by the script's melodramatic indulgences. The casting (most of the actors have achieved TV fame) is uneven however Eddie Kaye Thomas as CB is quite affecting in his evolution from a nondescript underachiever to a questioning gay adolescent.

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