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Thumbs Down for "Charlie Brown"
"There's an uncomfortable feeling of dead air that the cast...must work much too hard to fill," says the almighty New York Times in its review of the just-revived You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The show, says critic Ben Brantley, "feels sadly shrunken."
In a review that begins "Sorry, Charlie! You're a Good Man is never a good show," the New York Daily News says the production "manages to be more two-dimensional than the comic strip." Ouch.
Other critics were somewhat more kind. USA Today gave the revival three stars out of four, calling the show "a confection of primary colors, tuneful music and comedy sketches." Associated Press says the musical "remains a modest but appealing show." And in the most poster-worthy notice, the New York Post says "it keeps a miraculous and moving balance between joy and pathos, the so-called infantile and the so-called adult."
A sort of anti-Lion King, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is a stripped-down musical with no real plot, just a stage translation of Charles Schulz's classic Peanuts strips, featuring the likes of Charlie, Linus, Lucy, Schroeder and Snoopy.
The show originally opened Off Broadway in 1967, featuring Gary Burghoff (M*A*S*H's Radar O'Reilly) in the title role. It clicked with critics and audiences, scored a hit song, "Happiness," and eventually moved to Broadway in 1971.
The revival, which opened Thursday at the Ambassador Theater, scraps 17 of the 42 old skits in favor of 21 new scenes based on more recent Schulz comics, adds two new songs in a spiffed-up score and one brand new character, Charlie's kid sister, Sally.
In fact, despite a cast full of Broadway vets (including Rent alum Anthony Rapp as Charlie), it's Kristin Chenoweth as Sally who's drawing the most raves.She "is giving one of those break-out performances that send careers skyward," gushes the Times. "Ms. Chenoweth's Sally finds a mega-volt show-business energy in life's unresting siege of frustrations," opines the Daily News.
Her big number,"My New Philosophy," is cited by most critics as one of the musical's best, along with the Snoopy (Roger Bart) show-stopper, "Suppertime."
Sadly, it's Charlie himself, in the guise of Rapp, who is, in the words of the Hollywood Reporter, "the least compelling figure on view." Good grief, indeed.
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