insights - squarespace · from insights, 2002 originally composer/lyricist/librettist clark gesner...

InsightsA Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival

351 West Center StreetCedar City, Utah 84720

435-586-7880 www.bard.org.

Cover photo: James Stover (left) as Schroeder and Chris Mixon as Charlie Brown in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, 2002.

Contents

Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880

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Information on the PlaySynopsis 4Characters 5About the Playwright 6

Scholarly Articles on the PlayGood ol’Charlie Brown 7

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Synopsis: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

When the play, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, was first staged on March 7, 1967, at Theatre 80 in New York City, there was no real script. The six young actors were armed mostly with ten songs and ten years’ worth of cartoons by “Peanuts” creator, Charles M. Schulz.

Clark Gesner, who created the music and lyrics for the play, notes in the foreword to the Random House edition of the script that the success of the play could be largely attributed to Schulz’s “immensely human view of the world and his special ability to say it for all of us.”

The story of the play itself is told through a series of vignettes that mimic the four-panel format used by the original cartoon strip, “Peanuts.” This panel format is supplemented with longer pas-sages that are vaguely reminiscent of Shakespearean soliloquies and by musical interludes.

The scope of the play is described as an average day in the life of Charlie Brown and is broken into two acts.

The play begins with Charlie Brown and Linus talking. “I really don’t think you have anything to worry about, Charlie Brown,” Linus says. “After all, science has shown that a person’s character isn’t really established until he’s at least five years old.”

“But I am five. I’m more than five,” laments Charlie Brown.“Oh. Well, that’s the way it goes,” says Linus.The play moves along quickly, introducing more of the “Peanuts” gang; Patty, Schroeder, Lucy,

and Snoopy. All of the characters share their observations, largely unflattering, of Charlie Brown. Lucy, for example, discusses what she terms Charlie Brown’s “Failure Face.”

As the play progresses, the relationships of the “Peanuts” characters to one another are further expanded. To anyone who has followed the comic strip, these relationships will not provide any surprises. Included is Lucy’s infatuation with Schroeder and her perverse joy at tormenting Charlie Brown, Linus’s love of his blanket, Snoopy’s rich world of imagination, and, of course, Charlie Brown’s hopeless love-at-a-distance of the mysterious little redheaded girl.

The play concludes with the characters each listing the things that, for them, constitute hap-piness. Then, as the group leaves the stage, Lucy approaches Charlie Brown and shakes his hand. “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” she tells him.

Charlie Brown is left alone on the stage, with a faint smile forming on his face.“I’d do it again, I assure you,” he tells Valentine. “You never can tell, sir.”


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Characters: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

Linus: Lucy’s brother, Linus always carries a blanket as his security and comfort. He is usually mild, but can become quite vocal and aggressive if someone takes his blanket.

Charlie Brown: Five years old, Charlie Brown has very little self confidence and does not succeed at anything, even though he keeps trying. He is a kind and generous person.

Patty: With her “naturally curly hair,” Patty is completely centered in herself and how she appears to others.

Schroeder: A virtuoso piano player with a child’s mind and body, Schroeder is a disciple of Beethoven. Although Lucy is infatuated with him, he sees her mainly as a nuisance.

Snoopy: Although he is Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy many times has more wisdom and human qualities than the people around him.

Lucy: Linus’s big sister, Lucy is a tough girl and always wants her way. She is infatuated with Schroeder.


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The Playwright: Clark GesnerComposer, Lyricist, Librettist

From Insights, 2002Originally composer/lyricist/librettist Clark Gesner had no intention of turning his “Peanuts”

songs into a stage musical. However, producer Arthur Whitelaw convinced him to work up a the-atrical version based on Charles Schultz’s popular comic strip, and it was soon presented at a tiny East Village theatre as You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown where it remained for four years.

That, however, was only the beginning of a host of popular runs of the musical throughout the world.

In addition to You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Gesner wrote the book, music, and lyr-ics for Animal Fair, which premiered at the Denver Center Theatre. He also wrote with Nagle Jackson Broadway’s The Utter Glory of Morrisey Hall, as well as revues of Leonard Sillman and Julius Monk.

For television he wrote for Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, and That Was the Week That Was.

As an actor, he has appeared regularly in B. T. McNicholl’s Musicals in Concert series and performed regionally in 1776, Lend Me a Tenor, Carnival!, and other musicals.

The Jello Is Always Red, a revue of Gesner’s cabaret and theatre songs, was recently produced by the New Theatre Company.

Gesner passed away on July 23, 2004 at the age of 64.

Good Ol’ Charlie Brown


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By Don LeavittFrom Insights, 2002

If Charles Schultz had lived to see them, how would his Peanuts gang have reacted to the horrif-ic things that happened on September 11, 2001? Snoopy would most likely be the first to volunteer, boarding his trusty Sopwith Camel to take to the skies against the bad guys. Perhaps Linus would clutch his security blanket just a little bit tighter. Sally, with her unwavering faith in herself, would try to rationalize the tragedy, trying to make sense of it when even the adults around her failed to completely comprehend it.

And Charlie Brown, Schultz’s Everyman, might grab a nickel to see if the Doctor is in. Doubly unsure now of himself and the world around him, he would still blindingly, trustingly try to kick the ball when Lucy offered to hold it for him, and, when he inevitably ended up on his back staring at the sky, we would smile in spite of ourselves. Good ol’ Charlie Brown.

When Schultz created his comic world more than fifty years ago, he graced it with an innocent charm that some say will never be duplicated. His characters were little people with unique person-alities inhabiting a world where adults were always just out of the picture, their voices just so much garbled noise—yet adults, seeing the mature wisdom in the comic characters, were his main read-ers. Through his born-loser main character, Charlie Brown, Schultz gave us wide-eyed optimism in the face of constant, certain disaster: the sheer joy of a baseball game with your friends even if you always lose; or the quiet pleasure of flying a kite on a beautiful day even if you end up entangled and hanging from a tree.

It was exactly this happiness that attracted fans to Peanuts when it first appeared in seven news-papers in October 1950. Its popularity grew quickly, and, by the end of its run, the comic strip was appearing in nearly 3,000 newspapers worldwide. In the meantime, Peanuts appeared on greeting cards, in several Emmy-award winning animated television specials and as a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical called You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

The musical is the brainchild of Clark Gesner, a gifted composer who created the book, music, and lyrics of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Inspired by Schultz’s comic strip, Gesner originally wrote the songs with no intention of ever turning them into a stage production. However, in the mid 1960s, he played his songs for Broadway producer Arthur Whitelaw, who encouraged Gesner to create a musical based on Peanuts.

Gesner knew You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown would strike a chord with audiences. A devot-ed fan, he desperately wanted to capture the innocence and happiness of the Peanuts gang in a live show. As a writer for Sesame Street and Captain Kangaroo, Gesner knew how to play to children. But could he write about children in a way that would entertain adults? Rather than create original stories and risk missing Schultz’s unique charm, Gesner decided to use stories written by Schultz in a series of vignettes linked by Gesner’s original songs.

The result was magic. For audiences, it was as if they were reading the comic strip in their Sunday newspaper, watching each scene panel played out before them. It brought the world of Charlie Brown to life in a way that exceeded even Gesner’s and Whitelaw’s expectations.

The play opened off-Broadway at the Theatre 80 St. Marks in 1967 and stayed there for four years and more than 1,500 performances before moving to Broadway’s John Golden Theatre in 1971. The play was not nearly as well received on the Great White Way and closed after only 32 performances.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown had made its mark, though. For nearly thirty years, the musical has played in theatres around the country, many times with adults playing the familiar roles. It spawned several national and regional tours and inspired a less well-received sequel entitled Snoopy. Then in 1999, a revival was mounted that returned the play to Broadway. The musical was


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reworked with new songs, additional music and the inclusion of Sally, Charlie Brown’s younger sister who was missing from the original book. The result was a critical success that won two Tony Awards and the appreciation of a whole new generation.

It’s hard not to like Peanuts, and even harder not to like You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Most everyone can easily identify with Charlie Brown—the feeling of awkwardness, of never quite being in sync with the people around us, and the fear that no matter how hard we try, things might never, ever work out the way we want them to. But Charlie Brown also reminds us that there is a lot of happiness to be found in life, no matter how badly things may seem to go, and that true happiness is found in relatively simple things. Nothing captures this better than Gesner’s finale: “Happiness is finding a pencil . . . learning to whistle . . . two kinds of ice cream . . . being alone now and then. Happiness is anyone and anything at all that’s loved by you” (Act 2).

It’s a nice message for today, when everything seems a little uncertain and scary and com-plicated. When Charles Schultz died in February 2000, he left us a hero who, despite his fail-ings, never quits. Clark Gesner simply put that message to music: Charlie Brown might never actually kick the ball, but no matter how many times Lucy pulls it away, he’ll never stop trying.


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