Pit & Balcony Launches 94th Season with a Contemporary Musical Classic

Pit & Balcony Community Theatre is kicking off their 94^th Season with the lovable character who found enlightenment and solace from ‘Grief’ in all its permutations in their opening performances of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, which will run from September 26-28 and October 3-5^th.

This six-person musical theatrical classic is based upon the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schultz, which at the time the original version debuted in 1967 was at the height of popularity and served as a model for later ensemble animated comic classics as The Simpsons and The Muppets. Featuring music and lyrics by Clark Gesner, in 1999 an updated more modernized and popular version later debuted in 1999 with added dialogue by Michael Mayer and additional musical libretto  by Andrew Lippa, which is the version P&B will be performing.

With charm, wit, and heart, this production looks at a day in the life from the eyes of Charlie Brown and his friends the ‘Peanuts’ gang through a series of songs and vignettes exploring life’s great questions as they play baseball, struggle with homework, sing songs, swoon over their crushes, and celebrate the joy of friendship.

This musical also has an interesting backstory.

During the early 1960s, Gesner had begun writing songs based on Charles Schulz's Peanuts characters, but was unable to get permission from United Feature Syndicate to use the characters in his songs. Eventually he sent Schulz a demo recording of some of the songs and Gesner soon had permission to properly record them, which he did in 1966. At the time, Gesner had no plans for a musical based on this pre-production "concept album", but producer Arthur Whitelaw, who would later go on to write another musical based on Peanuts entitled: Snoopy! The Musical, encouraged him to do so. Featuring over a dozen original compositions, the musical also yielded a Top-10 hit in 1967 with Snoopy vs. The Red Baron.   

According to Director Chad William Baker, “The newer 1999 version of this musical that we’re performing  replaced the character of Peppermint Patty in the original version with that of Sally Brown, and features six characters consisting of Maxwell Teall as Charlie Brown, Dale Peters as Linus Van Pelt, Kennedy Danner as Lucy Van Pelt, Bailey Bills as Sally Brown, Matthew Howe as Schroeder, and Spencer Beyerlein as Snoopy. Other characters in the comic strip are referenced, such as Frida, the little red-haired girl.”

“The director of the 1999 revival, Michael Mayer, later ended up directing newer musicals like American Idiot and a lot of other shows,” continues Chad. “He added some new dialogue and then Andrew Lippa added some new songs for Sally, who sings My New Philosophy, and Schroeder also gets a song, plus the opening number is quite a bit longer than the original.”

One of the iconic qualities about Charles Schultz and his creativity with the Peanuts comic strip was how he would take common problems experienced by kids and adults alike and distill them through transactional conversations between these memorable characters in a manner where seemingly difficult problems were resolved with relatively simple common sense solutions.

But do these characters still translate well in today’s society with younger audiences? “I think so,” responds Chad. “Peanuts still appears in the Sunday comics, plus the cast is pretty young overall and in their late teens or early twenties for the most part.”

“I wanted to direct this production because I played Charlie Brown in this musical back in my sophomore year of high school,’ he relates. “We had the rights to the original production, because this was back in 2001, so we were doing it only two years after the Broadway revival. I knew the Broadway production, but we didn’t have rights to perform it so did the original version from the 1960s. Even back then the original was a little dated, plus it only featured a piano and didn’t have a full orchestra behind it, so I wanted to take a stab directing this new production because it features newer songs and more vignettes, even though a lot of the original scenes are still in this revised production.  Musical director Dave Miller is pulling the band together, with Aaron Whitfield handling vocal direction, so it’s been a tag team effort between all of us working through everything.”

When asked what the biggest challenge is pulling everything together for this production, Chad says it comes down to a question of balance. “We had a rehearsal earlier this week with the character of Lucy specifically, and I think the biggest challenge is finding that balance between playing the cartoon character and playing the role of the character, because these aren’t cartoon characters and they aren’t children.”

“Typically, it’s an older cast filling these roles, so they need to find a balance. It’s like Linus is this little smart kid having these big monologues, but he is a child so you have to find that balance between being very intelligent, but not too cartoonish. The same with the role of Lucy, because you want to get the character across but not sound angry all the time, which Lucy kind of is.”

Because Peanuts creator Charles Schultz passed away in 2000, right around the time Chad was in high school, he was hoping to cast this production for a younger generation and is pleased with the great turnout experienced during the audition process. “I was curious if anyone younger than me would show up for auditions because I was trying to prep for this and the cool thing is the revised musical came out right around the time Schultz passed away, so it was just before the comic show sort of ended.  The show has continued on and of course Peanuts is still around, and I’m pleased we have a couple of first time actors lined up in this cast, including Maxwell in the role of Charlie Brown.”

“The end song in this musical really kind of sums up the whole point of the show,” concludes Chad. “It’s called Happiness and mainly the theme is how happiness is just anything you want it to be - anything in life you enjoy.”

And with that being said, it seems the perfect sentiment to end upon within these trying times we find ourselves in.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown will run at Pit & Balcony Community Theatre from Friday - Sunday September 26 - 28 and October 3-5^th. Friday & Saturday performances are at 7:30 PM and Sunday matinees are at 3:00 PM.  Tickets are only $20.00 and can be purchased by calling 989.654.6587 or visiting PitandBalconyTheatre.com