Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18604 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 51 pages

Customer Reviews

Set aside one hour(for the play) and a packet of kleenex (for the end)
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!!

Welcome to Your Future, CB. You sure you want to go there?
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).

A celebration of teenage angst
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.