In 1966 Clark Gesner recorded an album of songs based on the comic strip “Peanuts.” After a friend heard it and passed it on to a theatrical produces, Gesner was approached about turning it into a musical. After some persuasion he was convinced and they assembled a cast for You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. In February 1967, with little more than a month before opening, director Joseph Hardy gave the cast the task of picking the strips that showed the part of their character they liked best. The musicals book was a collaborative effort of the entire 1967 production staff and cast and is attributed to the pseudonym of ‘John Gordon’. After receiving approval from Schulz himself, the show opened Off-Broadway for quite a successful run of 1,597 performances.
In 1971 a Broadway production was attempted with a new cast and flopped immediately. In 1982 a sequel, Snoopy!!! Opened Off-Broadway and ran for 152 performances. In 1999 the show saw a revival on Broadway with additional songs and new orchestrations by Andrew Lippa (a review of this production will follow.) The revival ran for only 14 previews and 149 performances.
What’s great about this original production recording is its intimacy and its truth. Gesner doesn’t attempt to write stunning music or Broadway standards, but attempts to bring out the child’s mind and its endless soundtrack complete with non-sense noises and dog chorus. The cast approaches each scene with their child’s eye first, abandoning musical tact, for imaginative heights that seem silly but extremely close to the eternal youth within. While listening to the CD you can understand that at the right moment this journey into the complicated simplicity of the Peanut children would be exactly what people wanted. The 60’s were the right time.
The 2000 re-issue includes four bonus tracks of Gesner playing and singing songs from Peanuts in Song, the demo he sent to Schulz.
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