Welcome to Columbine, Charlie Brown

Peanuts meets Glee - and Columbine.  Photo(s): Debut Cinematic/Karen Ladany

I don't think the Charles Schulz estate (much less United Features Syndicate!) looks kindly on Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, Bert V. Royal's foul-mouthed parody/paean to Peanuts, which imagines the whole gang as dysfunctional teens in some millennial high school hell.  Thus the names of the characters have all been changed to protect their innocent, earlier incarnations - the only clue (at first) that we're watching a kind of Charlie Brown Columbine Special lies in the lead's tell-tale initials - "C.B."  But gradually we realize that, yes, his buddy "Van" is what you'd get if Linus traded in his blanket for a bong, and "Matt" is lot like Pigpen with some Vanilla Ice attitude, and "Beethoven" could be Schroeder if his Dad had molested him on their baby grand.

We also begin to wonder whether Schulz himself (as opposed to his heirs) might not be able to see the bitter joke at the bottom of Royal's conceit: that the "good grief" which made the Peanuts crew so adorable has metastasized into a litany of addictions and abuses that poignant winsomeness could never keep at bay.  These kids need help, and desperately - but there aren't any adults to be found in their strangely empty landscape - just the usual muted trombones.  To give you some idea of just how bad things are for this crew, Dog Meets God opens with a rabid Snoopy tearing Woodstock limb from limb (or wing from wing).  And things don't get much better from there.

The first Peanuts comic premiered in nine newspapers on Oct. 2, 1950

C.B. is now (a bit improbably) a jock who sits at the cool table in the cafeteria - but inside, he's still sensitive, and this trauma sends him trotting from character to character, wondering "Do all dogs go to heaven?" just as he might have when he made his debut in 1950 (yes, it has taken these kids a long time to get to high school).  He finds little support in his existential crisis, however, because everyone else is battling some other, more clinical crisis - Sally has gone goth and Linus (now "Van") is a pothead, while Schroeder ("Beethoven") is struggling with his sexual identity - and if Pigpen ("Matt") now has the manners of a pig, he has likewise developed an obsessive-compulsive hygiene disorder.

Michael Underhill as "C.B." in crisis.

All these foibles are set up for ridicule as well as sympathy (except for the crass braying of the "mean girls" that Peppermint Patty and Marcie have become, which is pretty much ridiculed throughout). But if Royal sometimes draws his characters with crayons, still - they are cartoons, and his strokes are broadly accurate, even if some of his observations sound amplified from second-hand sources (perhaps tellingly, the playwright himself was home schooled - he never actually attended high school).

Likewise the plot - which begins to center on C.B.'s and Beethoven's possibly-romantic relationship - feels slightly recycled (although to be fair, Dog Sees God was written well before the premiere of Glee).  But you can't deny it's punchy, and potently mixes millennial concerns over bullying with a double shot of gay fantasy (What if the captain of the football team was gay, but didn't know it?? OMG!!)

Happily, at Happy Medium, sexy fringe mainstay Michael Underhill (above right) throws himself into C.B.'s heartbreak with almost frightening conviction, and gets fearless support from an ensemble that rarely opts for subtlety, but also rarely drops the ball, and keeps the satiric electricity crackling on stage. Kiki Samko nails poor Sally's desperately bad dance performances, and Joey C. Pelletier, through a poignant strategy of self-containment, makes Schroeder/Beethoven's sexual indecision quite believable; meanwhile Nick Miller seems unafraid of any and all political correctness in his hilarious turn as Matt/Pigpen.  Audrey Lynn Sylvia and Lesley Anne Moreau were likewise a scream (sometimes a screech) as "Tricia" and "Marcy," while Mikey DiLoreto made the most of Linus/Van's hazy philosophizing.  Indeed, only director Lizette M. Morris's own turn, as an updated "Lucy," was subdued - perhaps too subdued, given that Lucy is in rehab after setting the hair of the "Little Red-Haired Girl" ablaze (Morris was right to go for contrast, but some weird spark should still be flickering in Lucy's eyes).  Aside from that small misstep, I'd argue this is the best showing from Happy Medium in some time; a punchy script and strong ensemble, matched with an effectively scrappy (if minimal) production, means this intrepid fringe outfit is looking at a hit.

The fringe transformed

Kiki Samko, Michael Caminiti, Michael Underhill, Luke Murtha and Elizabeth Battey in Polaroid Stories.

Sorry for much of the radio silence of late - and my sincere thanks to the six hundred dedicated souls who have been checking the blog faithfully, every day, despite my absence. I appreciate your loyalty, and will be blogging more regularly!

First up is a remarkable production of Naomi Iizuka's Polaroid Stories, which plays through this weekend at the BCA Black Box.  It's a joint production of three fringe mainstays - Happy Medium Theatre, Boston Actors Theater, and Heart & Dagger - though it feels largely like a Heart and Dagger show, frankly, probably because it has been directed by HD's artistic core, Joey Pelletier and Elise Weiner Wulff, and also because its dark mix of sex, drugs and glamour/squalor has long been the signature of H&D.  As I'm a friendly acquaintance of Joey Pelletier's, I've seen quite a few H&D shows, and I'd say that Polaroid Stories may prove a watershed for them - it's certainly the first time their vision has cohered in so strong and subtle a way.

Part of this success is attributable to the script, which is both more polished and more accessible than some recent Heart & Dagger fare; Iizuka is particularly successful at conjuring in her dialogue the cadences of life on the street, where all her young characters live, almost love, and sometimes die (she drew on interviews with Minneapolis runaways for inspiration).  The playwright's big conceptual gambit, however - she attempts to limn these broken lives through the lens of Ovid's Metamorphoses - slowly proves less convincing, even if at first it seems intriguing and apt; after all, Ovid's odes to change and transformation definitely have their parallels in the rootless environment of the street, where nothing is permanent or dependable.


But gradually it becomes apparent that while the Metamorphoses are all about passion in its many modes, Polaroid Stories is usually about the lack thereof.  In short, Ovid's mythological characters always connect - their obsessions drive them to their destinies - but Iizuka's almost never do; indeed, the story she tells over and over is of love and connection thwarted by ennui and addiction (a passion of its own, to be sure, but one which the playwright never dares to explore, even though she posits a pusher called "D" - for Dionysos? Dis? - as the king of her shady underworld).  And as the playwright is always pulling her dramatic punches, her Polaroids never quite come into focus, and her characters never actually metamorphose into anything; instead they seem suspended beneath a grimly mournful umbrella that (harsh as this may sound) is fundamentally sentimental.  Thus well before it's over we can feel the narrative gears of Polaroid Stories beginning to grind . . .

Luke Murtha and Melissa DeJesus in Polaroid Stories.

Still, this remains the strongest production of this provocative play we're likely to see, and casting directors in particular will want to catch the final performances, if only to pick out the next round of up-and-comers on the local scene.  I've often sung the praises of several of them already - so I wasn't too surprised that after  stumbling at Stoneham recently, Michael Underhill was back in top form as Narcissus (who in a witty stroke has his name tattooed across his pecs, in Greek, and backwards), while the hunky Jesse Wood exuded a low-key mix of sexual confidence and experience as "G" (which I really hope is not meant as shorthand for "God").

But what was most striking about this production was how Pelletier and Wulff had drawn the best performances I've yet seen from almost all their usual players - Luke Murtha, for instance. made a charmingly spontaneous Orpheus (his ad-libbed love songs are hilarious and sweet), and the often too-forceful Kiki Samko seemed to have learned how to keep a fund of tragic feeling in reserve as a fierce, damaged Persephone.  Meanwhile newcomer Melissa DeJesus (above left, with Murtha) made an appealing, if not quite intriguing, Eurydice, and there was subtle work on tap from Danielle Leeber Lucas, Elizabeth Battey, Mikey DiLoreto, Michael Caminiti, Amy Meyer, Robyn Linden, Denise Drago, Lauren Elias, Nicole Howard, Kate Shanahan, and Sarah Sixt.

What's more, director/choreographer Wulff deployed the cast in consistently creative and apt ways through the void of the Black Box Theatre (aided by evocative, flexible lighting from Michael Clark Wonson).  If I'd loved the script, I'd call this a triumph; as it is, it's an impressive demonstration of just how high the Boston fringe can fly.  Through Saturday only.