Geek of Oz

Good grief Charlie Brown! The off-broadway hit Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead has come to Newtown’s King Street Theatre, to show us what happens when the kids from Charles M Shultz’s Peanuts comic strip grow up and face the challenges of adolescence. It’s the characters we know and love, but with lashings of sex, drugs, violence and teenage angst, resulting in a mixed but competent production. Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead uses visual clues and memory-testing references to identify the audience with the grown-up incarnations of the Peanuts characters. The play opens, fittingly, with Charlie Brown, re-titled “CB”, in his signature zig-zagged t-shirt giving an emotional address about the recent death of his rabid dog, that we know to be the ubiquitous Snoopy. It’s a sad way for Snoopy to throw off his canine coil and sets the tone for the rest of the play. CB gives us a guided tour of his world and introduces us to each of the other characters ...