Review: YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN at New Mexico Actors Lab

Already racking your brain with what to do with the kids this weekend? Why not go see You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown? Playing at the NM Actors Lab through Sunday, this is the inaugural production by Family Theatre of Santa Fe.

Set in the land of Charles Schulz’ Peanuts, the show is a series of songs and vignettes based on the original comic strip. The six person cast consists of Charlie Brown(Riley Samuel Merritt), Linus (Miles Blitch), Lucy (Ali Esmeralda Marin), Snoopy (Hannah Machado), Schroeder (Nicholas Laemmer) and Sally (Anna Balsamo). The show has its moments, and is definitely family-friendly. The score is sweet and the songs, for the most part, are funny and uplifting.

The performers did well with musical cues from an invisible music director on keyboard (Will Varner) – a feat that is very hard to pull off. The sound balance between the keyboard and the singers was quite good as well.

The cast was vocally strong, although there could have been more energy throughout, especially during act two (full disclosure, we saw the show on the last day of the first weekend, so perhaps fatigue was setting in).

Standout performances included Hannah Machado as Snoopy – her expressive face and mannerisms truly captured the pure id that Snoopy brings to the show. Marin as Lucy and Merritt as Charlie Brown helped keep the flow of the piece.

The minimal set was smart for the space, but some of the staging was odd – for example, why did so many singers turn their backs to the audience during numbers? With a ¾ seating arrangement, this was distracting. Having Schroeder’s piano with his back to the majority of seats was another example of an odd choice. Also, more attention could be paid to the lighting – there were many scenes when actors were in partial spot or no spot at all, and the scenes with Snoopy on top of his very large doghouse were dimly lit above the space.

This is a new company, and this initial effort bodes well for the future. The choice to cast adults in shows geared towards kids is a niche not being met in Santa Fe; hopefully families will take advantage of this new addition to the theater scene.

A couple suggestions moving forward: a family rate for tickets would be helpful for those purchasing for two adults and multiple child tickets; the cost could be prohibitive for many Santa Fe working parents. Next, if using the Actors Lab space, having a hold until the opening number is completed would be smart – we witnessed a couple of near collisions between cast and late people. In addition, the door to the theater should be masked/curtained in some way if people are going in and out – a blast of light from the lobby interrupted the action on more than one occasion.

As stated before, this is a promising first effort for this fledgling company. Come give Family Theatre of Santa Fe some love this weekend – Santa Fe can always use more performances and more musical theater!

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