A teenage Charlie Brown confronts life’s mysteries and challenges in Bert V. Royal’s, hilarious, thought-provoking, ultimately transformative Dog Sees God: Confessions Of A Teenage Blockhead, now getting a fabulous 19th-anniversary revival at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre.

Not that anyone dares speak “CB”’s full name given Dog Sees God’s proviso that it “has not been authorized or approved in any manner by the Charles M. Schultz estate.” (And don’t you forget it!)

Royal’s 2005 dramedy imagines the lives of a group of eight high schoolers “coincidentally” similar to a certain peanut-sized comic strip gang despite the octet’s slightly altered names and more advanced years.

CB (Marcus Wells) may still be mooning over the same cute red-headed classmate of his childhood days, but the lives of his friends have evolved in unexpected ways.

His sister (Ellee Jo Trowbridge) changes religions as often as fashion statements, and although last week she was on a Christian kick, this week she’s gone Wiccan.

Stoner Van (Anthony Turpel) has burned has blanket and smoked it, the onetime pigpen-dwelling Matt (Colin McCalla) is now never seen without his stash of hand sanitizer, and Van’s sister (Natalie Bourgeois) is still doling out advice at 5¢ a pop, though these days she does it institutionalized.

Tricia and Marcy (Isabella Coben and Addyson Bell) spend most of their time trash-talking “fucking-fatty-fat-fucking-fatass-Frieda” and not so surreptitiously spiking their cafeteria drinks, though they are not the only ones putting down classmates.

Matt in particular is such a verbal gay-basher that the mere sight of classical pianist Beethoven (Mateo Gonzales) sets him off on yet another homophobic rant.

If it’s not already obvious, Dog Sees God’s R-rated language and subject matter makes it a hard sell for most high school drama departments, no matter that these teens speak precisely like their real-life counterparts. Heck, even some colleges might pass on a play featuring both F words (and even a couple instances of the one that starts with a C).

Not so professional productions like the one now playing at the Hudson, directed with sensitivity and flair by Ryan Warren, who has elicited one gem of a performance after another from his cast of rising stage, film, and TV stars.

 A captivating, compelling Wells brings CB to vivid life in all his conflicts and contradictions as he deals with the death of a beloved canine friend and the discovery of desires he had no idea lay dormant within him.

Trowbridge is an absolute delight as CB’s sister, whose efforts to appear dark and mysterious can’t hide how adorable she is beneath the gothic surface, the Rider University senior’s caterpillar-to-platypus monolog proving a bona fide show-stopper.

A dynamic McCalla’s ripped gym bod serves as armor against a past he’s trying hard to overcome and a homophobia whose causes he dare not explore.

Gonzales’s sweet, sensitive Beethoven reveals repressed rage to heart-wrenching effect; Love, Victor’s Turpel makes an impressive stage debut as the most delightful of stoners; Bourgeois’s deliciously sardonic tongue as an institutionalized Van’s sister masks her own private trauma; and Coben’s alpha-female Tricia and Bell as her adoring acolyte Marcy score every single laugh their catty back-and-forth is meant to elicit.

Scenic designer Antonio Troy Ferron gives Dog Sees God a simple but effective Sunday comics set (and a “heavenly” eleventh-hour surprise) and Pablo Anton lights it (and Emily Warren’s character-perfect costumes) quite effectively indeed.

Casting is by Zachary Siegel, CSA. Ted Guzman, Emma Lord, and Jacob Martinez are swings. Lauren Shields is intimacy coordinator.

Dog Sees God is produced for Second Wind Entertainment by JP Carlsen. Amanda Rae Hall is production stage manager. Logan Moisey is technical director. Cooper Davey is production assistant. Courtney Cummings is marketing director.

I fell so in love with Dog Sees God when it made its L.A. debut in 2008 (at the Hudson no less) that I ended up seeing it three times in a single month, and I’ve jumped at every chance to see it again over the ensuing years.

Playwright Royal himself has called Dog Sees God’s latest revival “hysterical and soulful” and its cast “extraordinary,” high praise indeed from the man who wrote it two decades ago, but absolutely spot-on.

Updated here and there to reflect Gen Z circa 2024, Dog Sees God remains as laughter-and-emotion-packed as it was when I first saw it sixteen years ago in a brand-new gem of a production that more than does it justice.

The Hudson Mainstage, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.
www.secondwindent.com

–Steven Stanley
June 13, 2024

Tags: Bert V. Royal, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Hudson Mainstage Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review