RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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Good grief
JAN WOOLF relishes a seasonal offering of peanuts
Charlie Brown
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown
The Gatehouse Upstairs, London
THIS series of vignettes from Charles Schultz’s famous Peanuts cartoon strip is a delight, and embodied by an ensemble of actors clearly relishing the whole thing.
The comedy starts off nicely as Snoopy’s phone goes off and the audience are reminded to turn theirs off too. Harry Styles’s on stage band strikes up with that nostalgic pantomime sound – all shimmering cymbals, keys, strings and reeds calling to our inner children as the cast navigate the ups and downs, challenges and joys of growing up.
It’s funny — darn funny — the actors mining the comedy as well as the poignancy of their roles. Snoopy, a louche Oliver Sydney, wears a white dinner suit, changing into sparkly tux and taps shoes for his routine celebrating the only high point of his day, suppertime. Spoiler alert – he wears a bone tie.
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