YaGMCB

Tonite, I took my daughters to see my elder's middle-school classmates' production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". He was a good man. In fact, he was the only male of all the named roles. (There were two boys and two girls in the "chorus", which I don't remember from the script; still, one of them danced well as Linus's blanket in the "My Blanket and Me" number.)

I could tell two things about our lead man's singing:

1. He is a good singer, carrying difficult tunes well; and
   
2. His voice is changing.

Yes, his voice cracked in several inopportune places. Ah well.

With a small try-out pool, they had to cast a couple of actors who couldn't sing, and a good singer who couldn't act. My own daughter didn't try out, because she wasn't as interested as some others in her class, and she didn't want to take a part that she didn't care about and her friends really did. (Which is too bad, because in my biased opinion, I think she'd have made a great Snoopy.)

Another portion of my evening was spent keeping my younger daughter from upstaging the actors from her seat in the audience. This is not like television, where you can sing along and ham it up in the safety of your living room without bothering anybody.

I also spent some time wondering whether any of the 13- and 14-year-olds on stage had ever read "Peanuts". They've probably all seen the "Merry Christmas Charlie Brown" special, but that may well be it.