Mini-Review: 'Snoopy!!! The Musical'

Last night I had an opportunity to see the Four County Players' production of Snoopy: The Musical, the follow-up to the much more successful (and familiar) 1967 off-Broadway hit, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which had a short-lived Broadway revival in 1971 and was revived again on Broadway in 1999.

Despite running only 149 performances, that 1999 production was nominated for a best-musical-revival Tony Award, with Kristin Chenoweth as Sally and Roger Bart as Snoopy winning their own Tonys in the "best featured" category. (That cast also included Anthony Rapp as Charlie Brown and B.D. Wong as Linus.)

Snoopy: The Musical lacks such a storied history, although it does have cast recordings from San Francisco (1975) and London (1983), and an animated movie version available on VHS but not DVD or Blu-ray. (Twin trivia: The San Francisco production was Pamela Myers' follow-up to Company. Her career never really recovered. The animated film, meanwhile, includes in its cast Growing Pains' Jeremy Miller as Linus.)

As sequels go, this could be worse -- but not by much. Fortunately the exuberant young actors ignored the show's mediocrity and gave it their all, so the evening was entertaining enough to justify the cost of the tickets and the 30-minute drive to Barboursville from Charlottesville.

None of the cast of seven is past high school age (even if you include one Princeton-bound recent graduate), and a couple have not yet reached junior high, but all of them show talents that could be put to more effective use with better material.

Simply put, the score of Snoopy: The Musical lacks any of the wit and tunefulness of its predecessor. Frankly, there's not a memorable song in the piece.

While there are attempts by the songwriters (Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady) to ape some of Clark Gesner's successful Charlie Brown numbers, they don't come close to "My Blanket and Me," "Suppertime," or "Book Report (on Peter Rabbit)," not to mention the big hit, "Happiness."

Snoopy's score is second-rate through-and-through, although there seems to be a Raffi-like sense that the writers intend their audience to be elementary-school children rather than adults.  (More trivia:  Grossman was the composer of five original Broadway musicals, including Minnie's Boys and Grind, none of which had runs longer than three months.  Lyricist Hackady was his collaborator on two of them; those plus two other shows also failed to run longer than three months.)

As for the book, one of the co-writers is "Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates." Enough said about that?

How distant this opening show of the Four County Players' 40th season is in quality from the musical that will close it, Into the Woods. That's something to look forward to. especially if one of the three young male actors in this show's cast -- Peter Balcke (Snoopy), Daniel Neale (Charlie Brown), or Aaron Cohen (Linus) -- ends up playing Jack. Any of them could do it, really.

If you've got kids, feel free to take them to see Snoopy: The Musical. Even if you're disappointed, they won't be.

Snoopy: The Musical continues through July 8 (evening performances at 8:00 p.m. on July 5, 6, and 7; matinees at 2:30 p.m. on July 1 and 8) at the Barboursville Community Center, 5256 Governor Barbour Street in Barboursville, Virginia. All tickets are $12. Call 540-832-5355 for ticket information.

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Asking for Whom the Bell Tolls?

Forget about the sacking of its top three business-side executives, or the "resignations" of executive editor John Solomon and editorial page editor Richard Miniter.

If you want the strongest sign that The Washington Times is teetering on the edge of self-destruction, consider this: The paper has dropped its comics page, which has not appeared in the past two days.

When a whole section of a newspaper disappears without comment, you know that trouble is at hand.

At least Mallard Fillmore -- which, oddly enough, started at the Daily Progress in liberal Charlottesville -- remains on page A2 of the Times.




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Saintly Mishegoss

On this weekend's edition of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the humorous news quiz show on National Public Radio, the "Not My Job" guest was Susie Essman, who plays the furious, foul-mouthed Susie Greene on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Essman, a Jewish comedienne from New York, had to answer questions about a topic she was unlikely to know anything about.

The producers chose to quiz her about odd-but-true facts about three Catholic saints: St. Simeon Stylites, St. Joseph of Cupertino, and St. Clare of Assisi.

What were the odd facts? Did Essman answer correctly? Did she win a prize for a listener?

You'll have to listen for yourself:

Note: My spelling of "mishegoss" is the one approved by the late William Safire. It has alternative spellings, as well as an interesting etymology.

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Pearls, Swine, and Celluloid

Fans of the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine" (I am one) will be pleased to learn that their favorite animal characters -- Rat, Pig, Goat, Zebra, the Crocs, and others -- may be heading to the big screen.

According to the MediaBistro blog, GalleyCat:

In an exclusive interview, Stephan Pastis told GalleyCat that he is in negotiations with an unnamed studio to create an animated feature about his popular comic strip, Pearls Before Swine....

Pastis explained more about his upcoming projects: "We are currently beginning negotiations with a film studio (which I cannot yet name) for a Pearls animated feature. Also, this month, Aurora is releasing plush versions of Pig, Rat, Larry the Croc and Zebra."

While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, for me "Pearls Before Swine" is one of the funniest things in the funny pages. Pastis' strip is about the only comic that makes me laugh out loud. (For real, not just LOL; sometimes it's more like ROFL.)

I am eager to see how "Pearls Before Swine" makes the transition to cinema.

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'I'm the Mother'

Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein paid tribute to the late Estelle Getty in a guest column in the New York Post yesterday. Getty died earlier this week at the age of 84; Friday would have been her 85th birthday.

Before going on to worldwide fame as the acerbic Sophia on the hit TV sitcom The Golden Girls in the 1980s, Getty was a hardworking New York actress. In fact, when she was cast in The Golden Girls, she was playing the mother of Fierstein's character, Arnold Beckoff, in Torch Song Trilogy on Broadway. Ironically, according to IBDB, this was Getty's only Broadway credit.

Why "ironic"? Let Fierstein explain:

At the height of popularity of "The Golden Girls," there was no more beloved character on television than Sophia Petrillo. Estelle Getty, who brought Sophia indelibly to life, was awestruck: "What the hell is going on? I have the highest TVQ of any woman on television?"

It was true. For several years, Estelle Getty, formerly Estelle Gettleman of Bayside, Queens, was the most bankable star on any network. She was bigger than Carol Burnett, more saleable than Mary Tyler Moore and surer to deliver viewers than Cher. Still, the day after she won the Emmy, she told me she'd trade it and her Golden Globe for a Tony.

Despite all of the glamour, glory and gold of television fame, Estelle Getty was a theater creature.

Fierstein gives Getty much of the credit for making Torch Song Trilogy such a big success (1,222 performances, Tony Award for best play, a popular film adaptation [sans Getty]). Besides creating the role on stage, Getty had persuaded Fierstein to write the character into the play in the first place.

From the first reading through seven years of productions here and on the road, the marriage of actress to role was remarkable. There was simply nothing like seeing this henna-wigged tornado in a turquoise suit arrive onstage to announce, "I'm the mother."

So great was her performance that almost every audience member identified with my character. You read that right: Estelle's Mrs. Beckoff was so identifiable that everyone claimed her as his or her mother. And if she was their mother, then they were a drag queen.

The thing about Estelle was that you could not catch her acting. She was being. If her character was supposed to be angry, Estelle got angry. If her character was brokenhearted, the actress was brokenhearted. It all felt real....

Without the mother, "Torch Song Trilogy" would never have achieved its universal popularity and might not have reached further than La Mama. But with the mother, the play was, and remains, a force not to be denied.

Unfortunately, this dynamic performance was not captured on film. In the movie, Mrs. Beckoff was played by Anne Bancroft. Fierstein notes wryly:

Estelle was dealt another blow four years later when she wasn't cast in the film version of "Torch Song." Although we never discussed it directly, I knew how much that hurt her. (Recently, I've come to know exactly how she felt - know what I mean?)

There's another irony in this story, a personal one for me.

Although Estelle Getty played Mrs. Beckoff for some 1,200 performances (perhaps more, if you include the off-Broadway run and subsequent national tours), when I saw Torch Song Trilogy in New York in February 1983, it was during the two-week period that Barbara Barrie played the role in Getty's absence.

What are the odds of that?

Nietzsche Meets Keane

In his Richmond Times-Dispatch blog this morning, Bart Hinkle has a link to "The Nietzsche Family Circus," which "pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote."

My favorite (so far) is this one. (The randomization makes for a near-bottomless well of possible combinations.) Try to find your own favorites; feel free to share your discoveries.

It's quite funny, in a nihilistic sort of way.

Someday I Will Rule You All

Don't worry -- I'm not making a proclamation of megalomaniac ambitions.

"SOMEDAYIWILLRULEYOUALL" is the solution to the tap-danced, Morse-Code puzzle in this past Sunday's "Foxtrot" comic strip, in the funny pages of many newspapers coast-to-coast -- more than 1,000 worldwide, according to a biosketch of creator Bill Amend. (I saw it in the May 21 Washington Post.)

If you don't believe me, check it out yourself at the CGI Morse Code Translator.