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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><B style="RIGHT: auto"><FONT size=5>Bold, touching 'Dog Sees God' at Big Dog Theater in Cleveland Heights gets everything right <BR></FONT></B></DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto">Published: Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 3:00 PM <BR></DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto">By Marjorie Preston, Sun News Sun News <BR></DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>Basement Apartment Theatre’s production of “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead” by Bert V. Royal, now playing at Big Dog Theater, gets everything right. <BR></DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>This continuation of the adventures of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang follows them to high school, where they deal with popularity, death, drugs, sex, homosexuality, violence and just about every issue a teenager could face. </DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>The show is just the right blend of pathos and hope, with great chemistry and comic timing. </DIV>
<DIV style="RIGHT: auto">Charlie Brown, or CB (Dryden Thomas Meints) has always been wishy-washy. But when his beloved dog dies of rabies, he says, “that was when the rain cloud came back and everything went to hell.” </DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>He talks to his friends about death and gets no help from Sally, called here simply CB’s Sister (Travis Winter Dwyer), currently a Wiccan with a penchant for the dramatic, or his best friend Linus, known in the play as Van (Zach DeNardi), an escapist who has just smoked his own childhood blanket – along with some pot – so he would always have it with him. </DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>Pigpen, here called Matt (Ron Young), is now a germaphobe bully, and the brilliant pianist Beethoven (Nicholas Meloro) is afraid to come out of the closet for fear of bullying by Matt and others. </DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>Lucy, or Van’s Sister (Danielle DeBacker) has been sent to a psychiatric ward for trying to set the hair of the Little Red-Haired Girl on fire. </DIV>
<DIV>The superficial Peppermint Patty, or Tricia York (Catie Hewitt) and her partner in crime, Marcy (Erin Posanti), spend their time spiking their milk in the lunchroom, hating teachers and obsessing over red-headed Frieda, staring at her at the other lunch table while not eating. </DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>When the two of them throw a party and Beethoven shows up, the real fireworks begin. </DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>Meints has a boy-next-door quality and is both strong and vulnerable. He and the conflicted Meloro have great on-stage chemistry as CB lets his freak kite fly, as it were. </DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>One just wants to hug them both and tell them it gets better. Every character in the show has both starkly real and laugh-out-loud moments, and the mix is just right. </DIV>
<DIV>“Dog Sees God” is bold, funny and touching in its vulnerability, and on top of that, director Dylan Winter Dwyer and cast have mined every line for superb comic timing, from whispered lines to physically expressive entrances to the occasional wonderful midstream dialogue direction shift. </DIV>
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<DIV><SPAN class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>Designers Benjamin Gantose and Nicholas Meloro evoked everything from CB’s doghouse to Van’s sister’s psychiatric booth to a duct work and twine tree with a solitary red kite hanging in it, CB’s, of course, with a few simple set pieces. </DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto"><SPAN style="RIGHT: auto" class=yiv161502366tab> </SPAN>“Dog Sees God” runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through April 21 at Big Dog Theater, 2781 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, on the second floor of the Historic Centrum Theatre. </DIV>
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<DIV style="RIGHT: auto">Tickets can be reserved online at <A href="http://www.bigdogtheater.com/" rel=nofollow target=_blank>www.bigdogtheater.com</A>, by phone at (216) 472-3636 or cash only day of show. </DIV>
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<DIV>The show contains mature situations and language. </DIV>
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<DIV>For more reviews and community theater news go to <U><FONT color=#0000ff><A href="http://cleveland.com/community-theater" target=_blank>cleveland.com/community-theater</A></FONT></U>. </DIV>
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