Dog Sees God (CoHo Productions)

Good grief, Charlie Brown! It's only puberty.

By BEN WATERHOUSE

Times have changed in the placid Minnesota neighborhood where Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang spent their freakishly mature childhoods. Bert Royal's unauthorized sequel of sorts to Charles Schulz's genius comic strip—a work so unlicensed that the playwright changed all of the characters' names, presumably to avoid lawsuits; to avoid confusion I've changed them right back—takes place a couple years into the gang's high-school careers. Snoopy's just died of rabies, having eaten Woodstock; Linus (Tristyn Chipps) is a stoner; Schroeder (Joel Durham) might be gay; Lucy (Ally Yancey) is in lockdown for arson; Peppermint Patty and Marcie (Becca Anderson and Lissie Lewis) are a pair of drunken, abusive sluts; Pigpen (Nathan Daniels) is a sex-crazed cokehead clean freak; and Charlie Brown (Noah Goldenberg) is in mourning and increasingly sexually confused.

It's a fine setup for a comedy sketch, and the first hour, which drifts along amusingly enough through sex, drugs and assorted teenage asshattery, delivers plenty of laughs. But Royal, apparently desperate for a preachy ending, steers the play to an unspeakably trite and tragic last act and a tasteless metafictional conclusion. Imagine a cross between slash fan fiction and a particularly violent after-school special about gay-bashing.

For all the ham-fisted artlessness of the script, there's still much to enjoy in CoHo's production. Director Brian Allard has done fine work with the mostly teenage cast, which delivers stirring performances despite the weak material. Daniels deserves praise for his frighteningly convincing portrayal of the seething, violently homophobic Pigpen. He flings himself about the set, sullen and cruel and absolutely hateful. Seldom have I felt so strong a desire to bodily assault an actor. He and his companions make the show worth watching, right up until the play falls apart just before curtain. There's nothing these kids could have done to overcome the show's flaws entirely. And if the sudden, unpunished murder and unearned feel-good ending make you queasy, well—just imagine how Schulz would feel.

SEE IT:

The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 220-2646. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays. Closes Aug. 1. $10-$18.

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