This was another show I'd been thinking about for some time; I considered it for the lower camp in 1999 but the directors preferred Beauty and the Beast as a follow-up to the highly successful The Lion King. When Peanuts Creator Charles M. Schulz passed away in early 2000, it made You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown even more appropriate for that summer's lower-camp show.

The play was not written by Schulz himself, rather by Clark Gesner, and is not terribly challenging musically or narratively. It really doesn't have a plot, rather a series of brief sketches highlighting six of Schulz's classic characters and some of the comic strip's better-known themes. It's very cute, but doesn't approach the scale or scope of either of the Disney shows we did, hence this would probably be easier.

The show did present its problems, though, most notably that there are only six characters and no ensemble in the original piece, and if the last two years had been any indication, we were likely to have upwards of 50 children auditioning (we ended up with about 40 in the final cast). The question was, what to do with them? The script and libretto unfortunately didn't provide many opportunities, but we were able to add an ensemble to the eponymous opening number, the "Home on the Range" sketch, the baseball game, and the finale, "Happiness" (more on that later…)

After his performance in Tommy, sophomore Brandon Dinetz was a shoo-in for the role of Charlie Brown, and brought remarkable stage presence, as well as surprising maturity as an actor, to the role. Danielle Draizin, a second-year freshman who had impressed us in auditions for Beauty and the Beast the year before, had an amazingly powerful singing voice and was cast as Lucy. Another freshman who impressed us was Michael Warren, a newcomer to camp, who began his own impressive Pontiac Theatre career as Schroeder.

We originally cast Mike Garofalo as Linus, but he dropped out and we gave the role to Alex Asnis, Marc's brother, and he didn't disappoint; talent, we figured, must run in the family. Dan Gold, another sophomore, got the part of Snoopy and had a great time with it, but unfortunately this would be his only summer at Pontiac. Rachel Greenfader rounded out the main cast as Sally, and put forth a hugely courageous performance, fighting a 103-degree fever while managing to belt out "My New Philosophy."

As always, we tried to expand the cast to give out as many parts as possible, so we added some of Schulz's other characters to the mix: Peppermint Pattie (Annick Brand) and her sidekick Marcie (Lauren Geisser), Woodstock (Trevor Gilbert), and the Little Red-Haired Girl (played by the very red-haired Jillian Goldstein).

This time around, Howard and his crew would not be providing backgrounds and set pieces, partly because the simplicity of the piece didn't call for it, and partly because they were busy with other projects, so I painted a basic comic-strip backdrop with a brick wall and trees.

All in all, this was a good show; all the leads performed their parts very well. My only regret is that Jan and I couldn't figure out what to do with the thirty-odd children in the ensemble during the scenes and sketches that only involved two or three characters. In retrospect we should have found space for them, or at least some of them, offstage, but we thought it would be simpler to keep them on stage in the background for the entire show, which unfortunately tended to distract somewhat from the foreground action.

One particularly memorable thing we did on this show was to add a reprise of the well-known finale, "Happiness," which was specific to camp. "Happiness is Kenny and Ricky…" etc. The song mentioned numerous camp personalities, including all four of the kids' group leaders, and was a wonderful way to end the show and what may have been the best summer of all in the Pontiac Theatre.
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