You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown is a musical based on Charles M Schultz’s comic strip Peanuts as Charlie Brown , Snoopy and their friends explore life from a child’s point of view. We meet bossy Lucy who is in love with Piano playing Schroeder, Linus who will not let go of his blanket, Snoopy the dog an of course awkward and shy Charlie Brown. The show itself has no discernable plot but it is peppered with vignettes and songs to show you the children’s perspective on life.

It is a show that is new to me but one I had been keen to see for a while thanks to a number of my friends performing ‘My New Philosophy’ and piquing my interest. The show itself struggled to get me invested, partly due to the short sketch nature of it. For shows like this to succeed the sketches have to be either incredibly powerful, thought provoking or funny and You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown just didn’t tick the comedy box enough. However this was through no fault of Sedos and their talented cast and purely the source material.

Director Mark Siddall had cleverly created a 2D world to echo the origins of the musical, enhanced by a clever set design by Andrew Laidlaw and Mark Steward. All of the set pieces looked hand drawn and and purposely 2 dimensional which helped remind the audience that they were in a cartoon world. The opening of the show with each cast member stood behind a drawing of their Peanuts comic strip character was also a lovely touch to link the 2 worlds together. This ethos followed through into the props with oversized note pads and pencils to help hammer home that the characters in front of us were all children.

The cast were unwavering in their commitment and had really understood the brief that they were not only playing children but playing children from a comic book. They mannerisms were universally over the top which was perfect for this musical. Stand out mentions must go to Charlie Brown himself, Rob Kelly who despite the format of the show still managed to build a rapport with the audience as we all left rooting for him to find some self belief. His observations about his lunch break at school were heart breaking as was his wish to simply fly a kite or play baseball well and he achieved this balance between empathy and entertainment perfectly.

Claire Brewin was Sally Brown, Charlie Brown’s younger and much more confident sister. She captured the child like nature of this role brilliantly. Her number, My New Philosophy, along with Schroeder played by Dan Geller was one of the highlights of the show with her facial expressions and enthusisiam capturing the comedy in this song perfectly.

Overall Sedos understood the brief for this show well, embrace the inner child that we all have and let that play out on stage. Whilst the show itself may not be to everyone’s cup of tea the creativity and commitment from the cast and production team really helped make this a fun night discovering a show for the first time.

You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown is on until 13th July at the Bridewell Theatre. You can find out more here.

If you like this review you might also like my review of Sunday In The Park With George, Just So and Richard III all by Sedos