‘Snoopy’ has issues finding lovable qualities
Dear god, what just happened? It’s impossible to tell if “The World According to Snoopy,” at Theatre Under The Stars though Sunday, is so bad it’s good or just plain bad. It defies description, really, not to mention reason, logic and narrative. Someone just asked me what the show was about and my first response was, “Huhwha?”
It’s supposedly based off of the “Peanuts” comic strip, which is read mostly by old people, but the musical has jokes in it with the comedic sensibility of someone making mouth noises at a baby. Who, who, who is this for? Is there some golden demographic of 5-year-olds who love “Citizen Kane” references and 1950s-style sexism that I’m missing here?
Then there’s a college student wearing a “50 Shades”-esque choker and white pajamas who everyone claims is actually a beagle, and who makes jokes so outdated your dad would dismiss them as dad jokes.
Maybe the concept worked in panels on printed paper, but in real life it becomes the theatrical equivalent to a modern-day birthday clown — unpleasant for kids, sad for grown-ups and definitely, definitely not cute.
In this remake-of-sorts of “Snoopy the Musical!!!,” Theatre Under The Stars and Texas State University has retained all the songs that truly defy understanding. There’s a motivational number about how you should want to be a plow rather than a furrow — what does that even mean?
There’s another inspirational song in which a girl offers up her wildest career goal: to be Santa’s, wait for it, secretary. I suppose it’s about how women’s lib is more of a fantasy than a fat man delivering presents with flying reindeer.
And Sally, a prepubescent girl, tells us in “Husband Material” that she hopes she finds a good enough heterosexual male mating partner who’ll let her spend enough of his money on shopping. Andrea Dworkin didn’t write these lyrics.
“If you can’t empathize with Charlie Brown, you likely lack an ability to empathize with any fictional character,” author and essayist Chuck Klosterman
once wrote. Klosterman was talking about the long-running comic strip whose idyllic depiction of an average American boy nevertheless carried ageless observations about the adult world.
But here we have a musical in which the only relatable character was the crying baby in the audience who had to be escorted out of the theater.
I also related to the heckler in the audience on Friday night. Though I don’t condone his loud, sarcastic clapping in the middle of a song — that was awkward for everyone. And the talented college students involved in the show didn’t deserve
it because nearly everyone one of them had a fantastic performance. They were fine singers who happened to be in a silly show.
And maybe one day they will write brilliant senior essays about how “Snoopy” was an absurdist deconstruction of expectation, form and the idea of good entertainment, or perhaps a radical social experiment reminiscent of the Stanford prison experiment of the 1970s.
But for now they are simply in an unfortunate,
and unfortunately conceived, musical in which Snoopy says success “smells like money dipped in honey,” though, aside from the fact that that’s not what you’re supposed to do with money, the show he’s in actually kind of stinks. Well, at least the song forces Snoopy to acknowledge avant-garde concepts like “plot” and “suspense.” Because, after watching this musical, I could only wonder: What, pray tell, are those?