By Lisa DiCarlucci
Seeing Charlie Brown and his friends as teenagers might seem like an odd concept for a play at first. It’s even potentially troubling when you throw into the mix that the Peanuts gang is tackling issues bigger than the Christmas pageant.
“Dog Sees God” is a poignant representation of adolescent emotion that goes beyond witty puns on the former comic. The cast assembled for the Spectrum Players’ production brilliantly portrayed a group of teenagers struggling to accept their changing selves and also that of their closest friends.
The show opens with the funeral for main character, C.B.’s, dog; the audience is automatically wondering when it was that Charlie Brown got so depressing. Snoopy contracted rabies, killed Woodstock and was euthanized but worst of all, no one showed up for the funeral. The depressed C.B., earnestly played by Steve Spera, is barely consoled by his sister who is plagued with an identity crisis and an attitude problem to boot.
Gina Ventura does an excellent job playing C.B.’s sister as she hardly ever has the same type of clothing or mood in any given seen. She provides comedy, along with an exaggerated example of a teenager trying to find herself.
As the play continues, the audience is introduced to the rest of the gang all grown up. Linus is now Van, a pot smoking hippie (Christian Titus) who is charming and funny and whose sister, Lucy (Amanda McIntyre), has been locked up in a mental institution for pyromania. McIntyre’s one scene shows great wit and playfulness and she rides on the brink of crazy and flirtatious.
Pig Pen, now known exclusively as Matt (John Vincent Bahrenburg), and is a compulsive germaphobe who shutters at the sound of his former nickname. His quirks such as an obsessive use of hand sanitizer provide subtle comedy, but on the whole, this character seemed too over the top both in his male-chauvenism and his blow-ups at the lunch table.
Christina Myers and Laura Duell play two more over the top characters, but for them it works. Tricia and Marcy, respectively, are brought to life by these two actresses who are fearlessly shallow, skanky and tacky, but altogether hysterical. Most impressive about their performance is their ability to show the characters’ deeper insecurities while maintaining an air of confidence.
The most controversial character the audience is re-introduced to is Beethoven (better known to most as Schroeder). He has become the outcast of the group, tormented by Matt with homosexual slurs to an abusive point. Ryan Smith plays this character with an intense brooding shyness and a sarcastic defense that work to express this deeply troubled character’s angst toward his former friends. Locking himself away in the high school’s music room playing piano, it is not long into the play until C.B. interrupts. Sexual awkwardness ensues after heated back and forth which results in a kiss that is both shocking and almost expected.
The play continues as the two men share a public display of affection that stirs up much controversy amongst the other students. The fellow students’ reactions to the homosexual relationship seemed over the top for a modern play but culminate in an appalling act of violence that drives home the importance of tolerance.
Spera pulls at heartstrings as he comes to terms with the loss of his love, growing from denial to sadness but ultimately showing his character’s growth and discovery from start to finish.