The 'Peanuts' Gang, All Grown Up

"Dog Sees God" features characters resembling those from those classic "Peanuts" comics such as Tricia (Catherine Deadman, left) and her sidekick, Marcy (Ryan Christie). (Photos By Scott Suchman)

This is a parody of Charlie Brown and friends, so of course the cast has to be young. Otherwise, what would all the dialogue sound like?

"Woh, woh, woh, wohwoh, woh, woh."

"Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead," now on Studio Theatre's Secondstage, is Bert V. Royal's unauthorized riff on Charles Schulz's comic strip characters, all grown up and suffering through a sticky mix of adolescent dramas, from pyromania and pot-smoking to homosexuality and random sex. And, tragically, the death of one beloved beagle. The show is directed by Keith Alan Baker.

James Manno plays CB (get it?), whose sexual confusion manifests itself in bullying the keyboard-toting Beethoven (James Gardiner), meant to be a sensitive, grown-up Schroeder. Catherine Deadman and Ryan Christie play the inseparable Tricia and Marcy (hint: Marcy still calls Tricia "sir"), who are now hard-partying mean girls drinking white Russians in the school cafeteria. CB's sister (Lauren Elaine Williams) is an earnest performance artist pursued by pot-smoking Van (Evan Casey), who has smoked the ashes of his security blanket. Van's sister (Regina Aquino) has traded her football trick for playing with matches, while Matt (Robert Rector) shed his dust clouds and took up bullying and applying antibacterial gel.

The ensemble of eight is a mix of Washington veterans (Williams was nominated for a Helen Hayes award in 2004) and newbies (Manno graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in May). Royal's play had its premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2004. (Its short run off-Broadway seems not to have diminished its appeal.)

Though The Post's funny pages still feature "Classic Peanuts," the actors relied more on the TV specials than on the printed originals. Gardiner says that when he visited his grandparents as a child, they had two types of movies in their video collection: "Peanuts" or World War II documentaries.

Manno says that he studied the Shulz originals but that the play only "uses [the strip] as a premise," essentially creating all-new characters, "especially CB. He's trying to be the opposite of who he was."

Christie says she familiarized herself with the strip's characters, then "put them out of my mind." After all, her character, Marcy, is far from the innocent dope she once was; she's now a bitchy dope.

The play may be based on the comics, but the characters have to be realistic enough to sustain the plot. And, of course, they have to be funny. Manno says that in rehearsals, they would "start with what's funny to us." Christie adds, "Nothing's funny if it's all in cartoon-land. It's really only funny if it's based in reality." Rector calls it "heightened realism."

So how realistic is it? Aquino says she drew on her memory of how she felt as a teenager: "I remember saying in high school that everybody else is a cartoon, and I'm the only one who's real. It's the same for Van's sister" -- except, of course, Aquino was never incarcerated for pyromania.

Rector admits: "Within the past year, I've sort of lost touch a little with teenagers and teen culture, so I've tried to study them, how they act, how they dress, how they move." His research took him to the gym to get in the head of Matt, now a brutish jock.

Christie, on the other hand, says it's easier for her to conjure up memories of high school -- maybe too easy: "My parents live less than a mile from where I went to high school, so all I have to do is drive past the building and it's like whoosh -- it all comes back."

Some in this young cast have their next acting jobs lined up -- Gardiner will be in Round House Theatre's "A Prayer for Owen Meany," and Aquino returns to Studio in the fall for "Red Light Winter." Manno and Rector have been auditioning for their next roles, and Manno is considering moving to New York.

For now, the actors say they're enjoying the show, especially now that it's up and running. They report that the playwright attended an early performance and that his reaction was positive. "He even wrote me a MySpace comment," Manno says.

On that note, Aquino laughs and says of the cast, "We're all BFF on MySpace."

Just what you'd expect from the "Peanuts" gang.

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead Studio Theatre 202-332-3300 Through Aug. 6