Good Old Charlie Brown is Back at First Stage this Holiday Season
First Stage is welcoming families back to the Todd Wehr Theater in the Marcus Center for a holiday favorite; A Charlie Brown Christmas. Directed with heart and simplicity by the company’s Artistic Director Jeff Frank, the show runs through December 26 and I think it’s just what we need to segue back into in-person holiday celebrations.
This year there is no intermission, but there are lots of COVID safety precautions in place to protect the youngest theater-goers — including vaccine checks, mandatory masks, and many blocked off seats. But onstage everything looks the same — Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and the rest of the cast are here, thinking about the true meaning of Christmas. Extremely faithful to Charles Schultz’s comic strips, and relying mainly on the text of the original TV program, this production looks and feels like the holiday special of my youth brought to life. So why choose this holiday chestnut as a family outing this Christmas season? Here are just a few reasons I think the company’s first large-scale return to live theater is a great show to see now.
1. The message feels very timely.
The holidays were all but canceled last year by the pandemic, preventing a lot of traditional observances of Christmas, from theater and concerts, to in-person shopping and parties, to church services and gift exchanges. The quarantine also scaled back travel and prevented family gatherings. Now, in the post-vaccine world, some are compensating for that missed Christmas frenzy by gearing up for epic shopping sprees and concentrating more on the presents than the sentiment behind them.
According to A Charlie Brown Christmas, in the 1960s, the title character’s younger sister Sally was of the same mind. As she notes in her letter to Santa Claus, “I just want my fair share!” Taking a more practical approach, Sally says she’ll settle for cash if all the toys on her long Christmas list aren’t all available. Lucy adds in a later scene that she’s fine with gifts of real estate filling her stocking.
But just like the sound of Charlie Brown rapping on a pre-fab aluminum Christmas tree, we know the commercialization of holiday rings hollow. It’s nice to hear someone say that out loud.
2. The story stays true to its source.
A lot of children’s theater is based on very, very short books. When they are translated into stage shows, the adaptors often stretch a 10-minute story into a glitzy, 75-minute show with new songs, new characters, and multiple detours to the main plot to fill that time, making the outing feel like it’s worth the ticket price. Most often, this over-stuffing of a simple story is obvious and the result is tedious. It waters down and obscures what was so beloved about the simple children’s story to begin with.
A Charlie Brown Christmas does the opposite. It remains so true to the original comic strip that the beats in the show feel like three panel mini-stories, relying more on visuals than text. Many vignettes are stand-alone moments about kids throwing snowballs, ice-skating, and making a snowman. Others focus solely on the wordless beagle Snoopy, played here by J.T. Backes (the only adult in the cast), and highlight sight gags and physical comedy — which greatly delighted the young audience on opening weekend. Because it is so episodic, and draws so literally from the newspaper comics section that generations have grown up reading, every audience member has an easy entry to the material. Snoopy wrestling with a folding chair will always be funny, no matter what your age or attention span.
3. A Charlie Brown Christmas is full of stage magic.
It may sound silly in a world of CGI special effects and high-def video games, but it’s a marvel when snow begins to fall in the theater and the Peanuts kids try to catch the flakes on their tongues. There were giggles and gasps and whispers of “How did they do that?” as Violet actually ice skated onstage, doing impressive spins and twirls. And when the kids all start dancing to Schroeder’s familiar piano riff, their choreography perfectly matching the goofy actions of their animated twins, it’s joyful. Best of all, when the whole cast gathers around Charlie Brown’s pathetic little pine branch, and transforms it into a beautiful mini tree (with some help from Snoopy’s box of Christmas decorations), it’s the kind of theatrical sleight-of-hand that absolutely delights in person.
4. The kids are playing regular kids and adults don’t get in the way.
Siblings bicker over silly things. They would all rather dance than rehearse the annual Christmas pageant. Some kids are effortlessly popular like the know-it-all Lucy and some are always picked last, like Charlie Brown. In the “Sparky” cast, one of two alternating groups of young people who perform the show, Nolan Zellermayer does a really nice job with the puzzled, down-and-out Charlie Brown who hopes beyond hope for a Christmas card, and a real crack at kicking the football before Lucy pulls it away. King Z. Pollard’s blanket-wielding Linus, Thatcher Jacobs’s musical savant Schroeder, and Benjamin Poindexter’s odiferous Pig Pen were great terrific small but important roles.
Music director/pianist Paul Helm sits at his piano during these holiday adventures, playing with panache and directing both the actors and the audience in a round of carols to finish the show. Like the Peanuts illustrator Charles Schulz, Helm connects all the characters in often disparate scenes with a common musical theme. He sets the pace and the rhythm for the show and then stays out of the way as the kids sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and several other carols.
The entire show is like a smooth cup of hot chocolate after an afternoon of sledding: simple, sweet, familiar, and so special. Don’t miss it.