Playhouse season kicks off with You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

I thought they should have cast me as Sally, after all, I already had the name.

But I was given the role of Lucy in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” at summer camp in 2000.

It was a Girl Scout camp, and as there were more of us than there are roles in the play, so everyone got to act in one scene. I had the scene where Lucy tells Linus that someday, she will be a Queen.

I think that was when I first really became aware of the Peanuts characters. I don’t remember growing up reading the newspaper comic. I can’t even remember if we subscribed to a newspaper when I was a child. I had no idea that the man behind the familiar fictional personalities had passed away that year, or that the last original strip ran the day after his death in February.

I knew the Peanuts primarily from a VHS of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

But after performing Clark Gesner’s musical in a summer camp dining hall, I developed a special fondness for the bossy, self-absorbed character of Lucy.

So when I watched the Bigfork Summer Playhouse perform their far more professional version of the show, I watched with anticipation of the scene I had once called my own. I watched these professional actors with my own childish sense of wonder, because I remembered nothing from the production other than my particular part.

It’s funny how memories from your childhood can seem so large, and how easily they can let you down.

I vividly remember standing on the “stage” with a red, thrift store dress over my clothes, and rainbow toe socks pulled up to my knees. And in my memory my scene was long, with a lot of lines, which I delivered with gusto! The star of the show!

When the Queen scene finally arrived in the Playhouse production I sat forward in my seat, anxious to see if it at all fit my memory. It really didn’t. And I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed. Not because of how Nikki Spies plays Lucy. Her portrayal of Lucy was one of my favorite parts of the show.

My disappointment with that one scene had everything to do with my expectations. In my memory I had one of the most important scenes in the play. But in reality it’s a fairly insignificant moment.

It doesn’t compare to the scene where Lucy conducts a survey to find out if she is a crabby person. Or when she lays on top of Schroeder’s piano batting her eyelashes and suggesting that someday they’ll get married. Spies really brought the character to life in those scenes, as she inched up the piano getting closer and closer to Schroeder’s face.

And while Lucy will forever be my favorite Peanuts character, seeing the play 14 years later, from an adult’s perspective, made me appreciate the wonderfully entertaining personalities of the other characters.

It helped that the cast did an incredible job. I barely even noticed that Lucy’s little brother, Linus, was about a foot taller than her. That added to the quirkiness of the play, in which adults play children.

I absolutely loved David Leppert as Snoopy. It’s an impressive feat to play a dog, especially one with a personality like Snoopy’s that everyone is familiar with. While I loved the Red Baron scene, what I appreciated most about his performance was the small moments that were so purely Snoopy. Like when he follows Charlie Brown across the stage with his food bowl, or gives Lucy his unsolicited opinion for her crabbiness survey.

For me “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” was more than just an entertaining couple of hours.

It was a trip down memory lane, and a whole new discovery about these characters our whole country has known and loved since 1950.

At the end, when Charlie Brown finds the Little Red Headed Girl’s chewed pencil, it brought a subtle reminder that everyone is human, and happiness can come from the simplest things. Something I think kids just know to be true, but as adults, we often forget.

The Bigfork Summer Playhouse will perform “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” May 23, 24, 30, 31 and June 11, 14, 17, 23, 28. All shows begin at 8 p.m.