★★★★
Originally premiering in 1967, You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown began as a concept album of songs inspired by the Peanuts cartoon strip before becoming an off-Broadway musical. Told as a series of vignettes, it explores the lives of our favourite characters, including Charlie and Snoopy, as live people.
With a small cast and bare setting, Charlie Brown has spent decades in the doldrums of amateur theatre societies, but it’s refreshing to see it performed by a young and professional cast. This show is built for smaller theatres such as the Hayes, and the cast utilises this intimacy to excellent effect, having strong relationships with each other as well as the audience. Every member of the cast is outstanding, and visibly having fun with such rich characters. While not the strongest vocally, Mike Whalley captures the naive malaise of Charlie perfectly. He’s by no means the lead, though, and all of the ensemble cast equally inhabit their characters and bring them to life not as adult actors playing children, but as children dealing with the problems of an adult world.
Surprisingly, as the show hits its 50th anniversary, the music or jokes have hardly dated. Even though it’s without a plot, and could be just a little shorter, it still has the crowd in stitches throughout.
You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brownis playing at Hayes Theatre Co. until Saturday July 30.
