You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown
The Gatehouse Upstairs, London

THIS series of vignettes from Charles Schultz’s famous Peanuts cartoon strip is a delight, and embodied by an ensemble of actors clearly relishing the whole thing. 

The comedy starts off nicely as Snoopy’s phone goes off and the audience are reminded to turn theirs off too. Harry Styles’s on stage band strikes up with that nostalgic pantomime sound – all shimmering cymbals, keys, strings and reeds calling to our inner children as the cast navigate the ups and downs, challenges and joys of growing up. 

It’s funny — darn funny — the actors mining the comedy as well as the poignancy of their roles. Snoopy, a louche Oliver Sydney, wears a white dinner suit, changing into sparkly tux and taps shoes for his routine celebrating the only high point of his day, suppertime.  Spoiler alert – he wears a bone tie.   

Thumb sucking Linus, not yet old enough to be insecure, is played with exquisite timing by Jacob Cornish who delights in his pas-de deux with his blanket. 

Jordan Broach’s Charlie Brown is all gangly wide-eyed insecurity, as he doubts himself, finding an analogy with his kite, which never really flies, but gets stuck in trees or falls to the ground. There’s some nice surrealist comedy as he forgets to take a paper bag off his head while displaying facial expressions.  

Hilarious is the psychiatrist booth opened by Linus’s sister Lucy (Eleanor Fransch) as Charlie goes to her for help. She makes him list everything that is wrong with him and then brutally goes through all he reasons why people don’t like him, charging 5 cents for her trouble. Somewhere I felt the spoof of American preoccupations with shrink and marketing. It’s done very well.  

The other female – Sally Brown – played by Millie Robins is hilarious as she questions, with outrage, the C grade awarded by her teacher for her coat hanger sculpture, thus sending up a lot of art bollocks. 

Rather like Lucy’s market research as she runs a questionnaire on Socrates’s “know thyself” which has been put into her head by the serious, rather “up himself” Shroeder, played beautifully by Troy Yip. Shroeder is the one who plays Beethoven on his toy piano, and there is much soul searching on whether a Beethoven Day would be commercialising the great genius, who Shroeder clearly identifies with. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings eh?  

Now, this isn’t taking the piss, but rather the pith of a lot of earnest American tropes, and a wee bit subversive. Amanda Noar’s direction and choreography works wonders on many levels; kids will love it, adults too, enjoying it together. I thought it a bit like Jack Rosenthal’s Blue Remembered Hills, where adults played children at play in the English countryside. This does something similar. 

But don’t overthink it – as Shroeder might – just enjoy this fabulous entertainment, resolving happily with Charlie Brown declared a good man, after all.

Runs until January 14 2024. Box office: (020) 8340-3488, upstairsatthegatehouse.com