Humor, Melodrama and Superb Acting in New Milford
2007-03-02
NEW MILFORD - If you are wondering about the title of TheatreWorks New Milford's current production, Dog Sees God, it's from a throwaway line about "Dogs look at their master and see God, cats just look in the mirror."
The play - written in 2005 by Bert V. Royal for the 2005 Off Broadway Fringe Festival - is billed as an "unauthorized parody of the Peanuts gang" ten years down the road, as they flounder through a typical suburban high school. The old gambits of pathetic Christmas trees and tangled kites have been replaced by booze, drugs, and meaningless sex, all portrayed with X-rated locker-room language.
It's a bleak world, the story opening with the hero recounting to his forever unresponsive pen pal the news that his dog is dead. Snoopy apparently contracted rabies and attacked Woodstock. Charlie went to call him for breakfast and found him cringing in his doghouse, snarling over the mangled corpse of a small yellow bird. His parents called the authorities and had the beloved beagle euthanized.
Things have changed with the coming of hormones to the heartland. For one thing, the dorky black zig-zags on Charlie's shirt have been replaced by the irreproachably straight stripes of an Adidas jersey. And CB; (as he is now known) is a fully fledged member of the "cool" crowd, invited to the hot parties, welcomed at the popular lunch table, and teased by no one.
Adolescence has transformed the other Schulz characters as well. Linus has morphed into "Van," a Rasta-style pothead who flirts with Buddhism and took the ashes of his blanket (that his friends finally burned) and rolled them into a doobie.
Lucy is in a psychiatric hospital, blitzed on lithium and taking up knitting, as therapy for her pyromania, which surfaced when she set fire to the little red-haired girl's tresses.
Charlie's kid sister Sally has become a black-clad Wiccan, fixated on her one woman show about transforming from a caterpillar to a platypus, while Peppermint Patty and Marcy have become a pair of trash-talking, back-biting alpha girls, scarfing down black Russians from their Yoo-Hoo bottles, as they angle for the favors of CB and the sex-crazed jock, "Matt." This last is the biggest change of all, for the squeaky-clean Matt, who wears a bottle of hand sanitizer on his belt, and is preoccupied with avoiding dirt and germs, is actually Pig Pen (although he threatens to kill anyone who mentions that old name).
Now the social isolate is the piano playing Schroeder, now known as Beethoven. Taunted and bullied by the homophobic Matt, the willowy, bespectacled Beethoven hides in the music room during lunch, to avoid getting beaten up. It is here that CB confronts the defining issues of his character and of the play: Is he so anxious to fit in with the cool kids that he really has become one of them and, just what are the feelings that he has towards Beethoven? Could he himself be gay?
Satire veers into melodrama, as homophobia leads to violence, and echoes of news stories about bullying and schoolyard rage give the show a deeper level of meaning, and indeed moved this viewer from an initial attitude of impatient annoyance to finding myself deeply engaged.
This was helped by uniformly fine acting, under the usual excellent direction of Susan Pettibone. Her experience as a high school choral director shows in her ability to exact terrific performances from her cast, many of whom are in fact still in high school.
Everyone was good, beginning with Ben Grinberg as CB. I particularly enjoyed Keilly Gillen McQuail as the hickey-bedecked Tricia, and Samantha Tuozzolo is both smug and insecure as her brighter friend, Marcy.
Margaret Ann King is a hoot as Lucy, making one wish that a relatively small part had been larger. John Stegmaier radiates stoner wisdom to perfection as Van, Joe Morris is alarmingly believable as the hair-trigger Matt, Joe Russo captures the painful confusion of Beethoven, and Devon Caraway McCorkle does well as the voice of conscience in the form of CB's sister, Sally.
At times it was very funny. More often it was a little troubling.
If you're afraid of finding out what goes on when the adults aren't around, or if you're, offended by language, you won't like this show. But I think it raises questions about bullying and conformity that any parent needs to mull over.