The blockhead files: Out!Cast Theatre's Dog Sees God vs. vintage Peanuts

Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts strip always smuggled a lot of conflict and existential dread into the lives of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and a host of lovable scamps. Had the man nicknamed "Sparky" not been a genius of comic storytelling, it might simply have been the dreary saga of a misfit boy who's constantly getting screwed over by his crummy friends and anthropomorphic dog. Bert V. Royal's play Dog Sees God: Confessions Of A Teenage Blockhead (which Madison's Out!Cast Theatre is producing at the Bartell Theatre through Nov. 15) might be an unauthorized parody update—in which Charlie and the gang become a bunch of corrupted high-schoolers—but in a way it just builds upon Schulz's emotionally fraught groundwork, then takes it to more overtly dark places. The A.V. Club caught the play this past weekend, then looked back to the vintage strips to identify some common themes.

Dear pencil-pal...
In this strip: Charlie Brown writes his first-ever pen-pal letter (according to Schulz's notes in Peanuts: A Golden Celebration), and seems rather ambivalent about his "kind of crazy" dog.
In the play: "CB" opens Dog Sees God with a letter to his pen-pal, noting that he's never actually heard back from this person. The occasion? His dog's been put down after contracting rabies and killing "a little yellow bird." From this start, it's clear that CB (Nick Kaprelian) remains the central character and the biggest downer in this universe, and at first it's actually genuinely depressing until the small ensemble fills out. For better or worse, this version of Charlie's a whole lot less colorful all around. Or maybe the color's just been repressed.

Pig-Pen
In this strip: Charlie Brown muses that his self-proclaimed "dust magnet" of a friend, Pig-Pen, might in fact be a walking archaeological document.
In the play: Edric Johnson, as "Matt," brings a lot of genuine nastiness and tragic potential to the play, even during his first scene. He looks the part of a guy who's grown up to be a jock, but also extremely touchy about people even repeating his former childhood nickname. He carries around a bottle of hand sanitizer, and when he taunts piano whiz Beethoven (Adam Williams) for being gay, the show suddenly feels too dark to be a mere quirky send-up.

Good grief!
In this strip: Perhaps Schulz is gently poking back here at Mad magazine for its many Peanuts parodies over the years (which have continued long after his death). It's also a rare instance of the broader pop-culture universe inserting itself into Peanuts land.
In the play: Half of the comedy in the show comes from watching Peanuts' surface innocence crumble before the increased self-awareness and hipness of teenagers. In one of the play's disappointingly rare bits of physical comedy, a party scene opens on a bunch of the characters doing the good-old zombie-like Peanuts dance, only to lapse into a hip-hop bump-'n'-grind.

That's a great metaphor, sir
In this strip: The obsequious Marcie acts as a sounding board for Peppermint Patty's vanity and self-doubt.
In the play: Marcy (Ginger Swart) can still play that role to Tricia York (Kay Dixon), but has finally learned to lord her intelligence over her parasitic friend. The funniest scene in the show might be when Marcy steps into a spotlight to bullshit Tricia with a lecture on the history of the spork.