The cast of Skullduggery’s “Dog Sees God”
A lightning bolt of bright yellow fabric tells the whole story. The lights come up on Charlie Brown and we find that the familiar zigzag stripe across his shirt has traveled from a horizontal alignment to that of a defiantly vertical orientation.
It’s “Peanuts” turned on its head in “Dog Sees God,” the serio-comic work staged by Skullduggery Theatre in their new downtown space on the third floor of a nondescript office building at 222 S. 19th St. (through Nov. 29, tickets 317-7893).
For what seems an eternity, playwright Bert V. Royal’s script comes across as a cloyingly extended SNL skit, one that toys with a profanely twisted re-imagining of the “Peanuts” gang now in their angst-ridden teen years.
A rabid beagle has been put down after devouring his feathered friend. Lucy is in the slammer for torching the locks of the Little Red Headed Girl. Marcy and Peppermint Patty have blossomed (is that the word?) into mean-girl sluts. Pigpen is now a germaphobe with anger issues. Linus is a philosophical stoner. Sally has gone Goth. Themes of sexual identity, bullying, eating disorders, three-way sex and drug use abound.
It is all so thoroughly tiresome until the strangest thing happens; the play takes a detour a third of the way through its short, 90-minute life to become a charmingly, chillingly bittersweet love story.
Chalk that up to sparklingly gut-wrenching performances from two of the most exciting new faces of the Omaha stage – Joe Fogarty (SNAP’s “Speech & Debate”) as the round-headed kid, and Lee Osorio (the Blue Barn’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide”) as the teased and tormented Beethoven – think here of the artsy outsider in “American Beauty.”
Add a fine turn by Carrie Beth Stickrod (Broadstreet’s “Baby”) as the incarcerated arsonist and “Dog Sees God” becomes more than just a clever palindrome.
