Sixth Grade Revisited

REMEMBER, back in grammar school or something, you went into New York on a Sixth Grade Field trip and you threw stuff around on the bus; you had to get dressed up because you were going into The City, and you had to be on your best behavior, so the bus stopped down there someplace and you got out and looked around and all the people around you were real mean-looking and not-particularly-dressed-up either and coming out of XXX Bookstores and lying in the gutter, so you went into the theater and saw this show with happy songs--"happiness is two kinds of ice cream"--and a dog that sings and guy whose kite won't fly, only you didn't laugh at any of the jokes 'cause they weren't funny, only the chaperone did?

Well, now you're older, and even though all those dumb jokes aren't getting any younger either, you can still give them all a second chance in the Winthrop House JCR this weekend. Charlie Brown, despite his advancing years, and despite the fact that newspapers are pushing both him and Jules Feiffer aside in favor of Doonesbury, is still young America's quintessential nebbish, every little boy's and girl's Woody Allen-writ small. Charles M. Schultz's cutesie-pie pop-psychological ponderings have been adapted for the stage by Clark Gesner.

The cast here is so enthusiastic, the simple scenery so good, the music so well-performed, and the pace so fast, that you almost forget how silly Gesner's book, adapted from Charles M. Schultz's pop-psychological ponderings, really is. Or is it? If it isn't, then it's a good thing that little kids don't understand it. I certainly wouldn't want my little kid to be exposed to a message so inherently defeatist--even though you can't hit a baseball, and your dog only likes you because you feed him, and you pay your nickels to an amateur psychiatrist and you'll probably never amount to a hill of beans, don't worry, Charlie Brown and Everyman, "you're you."

In case your memory doesn't extend back to sixth grade, Charlie Brown consists of a series of vignettes, tied together neatly by the notion of the cast's descent into the abyss of comical self-doubt and (yuk, yuk) mutual recrimination. The six cast members handle the material superbly; Leslie Koenig's direction has resulted in a tight and fast moving ninety minutes. Greg Smith's Charlie Brown is a sincere, handsome if "wishy-washy" little guy with a faint trace of southern accent. Jim Meier's Snoopy is a dog that thinks he's a dancing ham; his "Suppertime" threatens to steal the show, but the larceny is foiled by the full cast's elaborate "Book Report." Bobbie Hendricks as Patty and Patty Low as Lucy turn in competent performances. David Frutkoff is terrific as the blanket-wielding Linus, but why did he throw in those in-joke one-liners to his buddies in the audience? Ken Getz as Schroeder, the introverted disciple of Beethoven, logically doubles as a pianist in the show's five-piece orchestra.

Whatever the nature of Charlie Brown's appeal, it is probably directed at a non-sixth grade audience. The little girl sitting next to me, who confessed at intermission that she uses a Snoopy toothbrush every night, didn't laugh once the whole time; her parents, sitting behind her, couldn't have guffawed any louder. So maybe you should see Charlie Brown, especially if you didn't get it the first time around, but how about doing the kids a favor and sending them to see The Beggar's Opera instead?