"And what a Snoopy was Mark Jacobucci!"
Ellis Morris, From The Morris Chair
The Register, December 07, 1972
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I could have been back in one of those Saturday kiddie matinees at the movies.
Wild, mad.
The same ear-splitting screaming, shrieking, laughing, whistling, stamping, hooting and booing.
All out, man.
Was I upset?
Heck, no.
Even caught myself chuckling because a couple of teachers obviously very much wanted to clamp hands over their ears arid get out of there.
Only it wouldn't have looked good, I suppose.
It wouldn't have mattered.
Those kids wouldn't have cared less.
Blame Charlie Brown and his whole Peanuts gang, including that lovable extemporizing canine galoot, Snoopy.
They were all there on the Barnstable High School stage last Thursday morning for a preview of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," for pupils from the Centerville and Osterville schools.
They were back that night, Friday and Saturday nights, with some case switching, to tease the funnybones of adults.
Thev succeeded, even if the teen-age and adult audiences were just a bit more inhibited than the kids with whom I sat.
It was a madhouse, sort of, that morning.
It started out that way.
The thing was, because of the complexities of school bus schedules and different school starting times, the Osterville contingent got there at 8.10, and the Centerville youngsters not until 9:15.
The Centervillc school doesn't start as early as most, and besides, there was attendance and lunch count to attend to and that took time.
Your hats should be off to
Jim Ruberti and
John Hagon,
the drama and music directors who have teamed up to give us "West Side Story," "Oliver," "Kiss Me, Kate," "Dracula Baby," and, more recently, "Fiddler on the Roof."
There they were, stuck with hundreds of fidgety squirming kids out front.
Charlie and his pals were ready to go, so was the orchestra, but everything had to wait until Centerville showed up.
Jim and John didn't commiserate or bite their nails.
They did something else.
Hagon summoned his musicians into the pit, raised his baton and zipped them into one of the musical's swingingest, noisiest numbers.
On its final note he swung around and told his now attentive audience what the number was all about and how it would fit into the play to come.
Then came Jim, Henry VIII beard plus the big Ruberti grin, up there on stage.
One by one he introduced the cast. auippinj, ' the while, using up time without the kids realizing it.
Then Hagon again, with more music, more talk - like Leonard the Bernstein.
Finally the Centerville crowd hurried in, eager as all get out Ruberti gave the signal.
The houselights were dimmed.
The kids whistled and screeched.
Especially the long-seated Osterville boys and girls.
For some reason the lights came back on.
You never heard such booing.
But once more the place was darkened.
This time foi real.
And up there on the other side of the footlights, in the spotlight, was the hero, Charlie Brown, shifting around nervously, grinning shyly and plaintively telling everyone in song what a born loser he was.
Charlie was
Jim Frangione, brother of
Nancy, one of Barnstable High's really great actresses of the past.
Jimmy's performance as Charlie Brown was to be good enough to assure you he'd catch up with Sister Nancy talent-wise, even if he does have a long ways to go.
But it was Snoopy who took over these kids out front completely; the same Snoopy who from his doghouse roof zooms and rat-a-tat-tats all over the place in his imaginary aerial dogfights with the likes of the Red Baron, soliloquizes mischievously over his next meal, or dances or sings solo or with the others..
And what a Snoopy was
Mark Jacobucci.
He had a great sense of comic timing, in lines, posturing or expression.
Mark didn't look like any kind of dog, of course, but he sure acted like a dog would if he were trying to act like a human being, which is Snoopy's thing.
The characters were all there:
Schroeder, Beethoven-smitten pianist-philosopher, played by
Rick DePamphilis;
Lucy, (red-headed
Marie Hatton) wooing Schroeder, brow-beating her brother, blankettoting Linus
(Dick Patterson), teasing Charlie; pouting Patty (Ann McConnell.
In later performances
Charlie Beggs was to alternate as Charlie,
Carol Klusky as Lucy,
Glenda Grantham as Patty and
Chuck Tuttle as Linus.
All were good in their roles.
On Thursday some of the singing voices weren't strong enough to carry over the orchestra despite the abundance of overhead mikes; those that were owned by
DePamphilis and
Patterson.
One number was outstanding.
This had the entire cast "in classroom" each giving his book report on Peter Rabbit.
The audience loved it.
There were fine dance numbers by
DePamphilis and
Patterson, the latter's "My Blanket and Me."
Real good soft-shoe stuff by both.
Oh, oh - and Snoopy was no slouch in the terpsichore department either.
There was one bit of confusion but it too was turned into a laugh.
The pupil audience, obviously unaccustomed to entertainment of such length on school days and thinking the show was over, started to leave during intermission.
They were putting on their things and moving out of the auditorium.
Ruberti caught on and got to a mike quickly.
He had not the least trouble getting them back.
Those kids were ready for more.
After the closing performance Saturday night something unique happened.
Audiences accustomed to applauding when the faculty director is called to the footlights and presented a gift by the cast were treated to a switch.
Mara Williams and
Sue Norman, the student directors, were summoned and honored this time, much to Ruberti's delight. "They did it all, they did," he said.