Customer Reviews

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead - Acting Edition

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Burt Royal brings the Peanuts Gang into the 21st century, and it's not a pretty sight.

The characters are recognizable as Peanuts analogs, not just from their names but from their habits and tendencies; even the characters who are merely mentioned (Franklin, Freida, The Little Red-Haired Girl) make sense from the minimal descriptions given them. Only the Beethoven character requires some work for his character to make sense.

The plot of the play involves CB mourning his dead dog, trying to figure out the meaning of life and trying to do right by someone he had known before some troubles threw him into the "Violently Outcast" category. His friends are unable to answer or mourn, and his attempt to right things goes mortally wrong.

As long as the characters stay in their stage reality by using their stage names the action seems to drift from dysfunction to dysfunction. Every thing that could go wrong with Teenagers today, from drinking to eating problems to extreme navel-gazing to bullying to cattiness to lazy religiosity is hit, one at a time with each character. As stage names resolve into Peanuts names, however, the stage reality slips off with painful consequences for all involved. And the final scene will throw all but the darkest of hearts into tears.

The major drawback to the play is that the character depiction seems to require a bit too much of an early 2000's understanding of teenager behavior, and of that only what people consider wrong with kids nowadays. The characters (Outside of CB) seem unable to do more than pay attention to themselves; hence the turn to the worse when one character gets forced out of his stage reality by a name said by another character (One Word: Pigpen).

Having said that, the play is an interesting window into how the Peanuts characters could have evolved had they been allowed to become adolescents. While the subject matter definitely requires a certain level of tolerance or maturity (or willingness to let things develop), there is some hopefulness in the outcome. CB does get some accolades from family and friends, and even a letter from his Pen-Pal.

Not an all-out five-star (don't like what's happened to the Peanuts gang, at least according to Royal), but definitely worth buying (and doing on stage).

Just read this today on the train to Albany from NYC. The vast majority of this read like a light literary exploration of comedic masturbation intended to shock and offend, with little or no point or purpose (hence the 4 stars). However, the final three pages pulled it all together in a breathless, world-changing (at least for me) sob-fest guaranteed to bring the most staunch of middle-aged men and women to their knees in tears. This conclusion moved me more than the end of ANGELS IN AMERICA, maybe cos it came out of f$%^&ing nowhere, and that's saying a LOT!!

I loved reading this play. It was recommended to me by a friend, since she knew I really loved the Peanuts gang. Although it does have strong language and general material, it's an interesting take on what the gang would be like if they grew up in the modern world and are now high schoolers. It's something that is it's own piece, but at the same time, you can tell which characters are which.

I saw a production of this play put on by Stray Cat Theatre in Phoenix, AZ and I laughed until I cried and then truly cried at the end. Beautiful performance of an amazing script. A must see and a MUST read!

Clever in its attempts to continue the Peanuts universe into adolesence. Filled with angst and profanity galore, this play seeks to teach valuable lessons to the audience... be who you are, stay true to your friends, and do what you can to put an end to bullying and harrassment. My only complaint is that the play was unnecessarily vulgar in MANY places. It's as though the author wanted to shock instead of explore.

This play is a hilarious take on the Peanuts gang with a heart-wrenching ending. It's a true look at becoming an adult today, a must read.

Charles Shultz's PEANUTS comic strip began in 1950 and ran until his death in 2000. It remains in syndicated "re-runs" in many, many newspapers to this day. Along the way, the comic strip inspired numerous television specials, movies, and the 1967 stage musical YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN, which continues to be widely performed today. Its characters are easily among the most beloved pop icons of the 20th Century.

And then there's Bert V. Royal's DOG SEES GOD: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BLOCKHEAD, which is generally described as "an unauthorized parody" of PEANUTS. The play began as a series of readings in 2004 and continued through various tweaks to emerge as a popular off-Broadway show a year or so later. It has been widely performed, particularly in the wake of several widely reported cases of bullying that ended in suicide.

The characters of DOG SEES GOD are clearly riffs on the children from the Peanuts gang. Charlie Brown has become C.B. and is mourning his dog, who recently died of rabies. His sister (never named but clearly Sally) is going through weekly religious phases: last week she was Baptist, this week she is wiccan. Linus Van Pelt, now known as Van, has become a pot-head, and his infamously crabby sister (like Sally, never named but clearly Lucy) is locked up in a psych ward as a pyromaniac. Peppermint Patty and Marcie have transformed into Trisha and Marcy, both of them pretty and pretty slutty. Pigpen has morphed into a germaphobic and homophobic jock named Matt. And then there is Beethoven, a new take on Schroeder; his father was arrested some time ago and Beethoven is now the outcast of the crowd, which hates him because they think he is gay.

The play moves along in a series of short scenes that are linked by C.B.'s writing of a letter to his old pen pal, someone he has not written to in several years, who never answered him when he wrote before, and who may not even exist. He is deeply saddened by the loss of his dog and repeatedly questions his friends about the nature of an afterlife or even if such exists--and he receives only shallow answers. Then, partly motivated by regret for the way he has treated Beethoven all these years, he kisses Beethoven at a party in front of all their friends. The result is disastrous for all concerned.

Throughout the scenes the characters smoke pot, use their high school milk cartons as the basis for a few lunch-time White Russians, snort coke, and try--often successfully--to get each other into bed. It is a mix of the humorous and downright nasty, at times very funny and at times often distasteful, with a conclusion that seems to come out of nowhere to stagger the reader with an answer about God and afterlife that C.B. hasn't expected at all.

DOG SEES GOD is not really everything it could be. Frankly, it seems to me that Royal has too often taken the easy way out, using his gift for comedy to cover up his inability to mesh the more serious moments of the show into the script. The philosophic musings are a bit too random; the sudden twist at the play's end is too unanticipated. Even so, DOG SEES GOD is an amazing bit of satire and when it strikes true, it strikes too close to home for comfort. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This was a great story. My jewish friend actually turned me on to this amazing story. The beginning up until the end is good, but the last four pages are enough to make the strongest person cry.

I think that this show is the best play I have ever read. While some may argue that this doesn't happen in high school, I think that those people are wrong. There are kids in some high schools that drink that much, smoke that much, and have sex that much. As for the bullying, it does happen. There is some form of bullying at every high school. While it may not be about them being gay or not is another issue.

The moral of the show is what hit me the most. It's okay to be different, because everyone is. I cried during the last scene because of how powerful it was.

I was recommended this play by a fellow Theatre student and at first I did not think I would like the concept, especially given my love for the Peanuts Gang. When I read the first page, which opens with a monologue by CB, I was taken aback. This was already getting me hooked on the story and made me want to read more. I almost could not tear myself away from the book. The struggles all these characters go through are vastly exaggerated, to the point of total satire, but in it's exaggeration it becomes more real and all the more approachable.

Needless to say, I loved every second of this play, as did many of my other Theatre friends.