It starts and ends with a funeral, which aligns with the palindrome title: dog sees god. The first is for CB’s dog, which only his sister turns up for. But everyone is there for the group counselling session following the suicide of … one of their number.

This very morning the Dominion Post has Charlie Brown calling himself a blockhead because “I lost us the championship.” Hence the subtitle: confessions of a teenage blockhead.

For some reason I had expected this show to be little more than a gross-out demolishing of the Peanuts comic characters’ child-like innocence now they are past puberty and in senior high school. As a parody of teen-angst drama (it covers all the clichés) it does go for gross but there’s more to it than that. It continues the enquiry into peer-group cruelty that was Peanuts creator Charles Schultz’s initial theme.

Playwright Bert V Royal is careful not to explicitly name the characters after Schultz’s creations, who remained children from 1950-2000. Indeed the programme carries a disclaimer insisting neither his estate nor the distributor of his comic strips have any responsibility for this play’s content. So part of the game is to pick the character.

CB (Charlie Brown) is grieving the loss of his beagle (Snoopy) who has died of rabies after mangling a small yellow bird (Woodstock). Only CB’s Sister (Sally),who has exchanged her girly sloth persona for a Goth phase, turns up. She ridicules his desire to know what happens to dogs after they die.

Perpetually stoned Van (Linus van Pelt, the philosopher – guess what he did with his blanket) offers the Buddhist options. Sex-addict Matt (Pig-Pen) can’t see past the end of his dick except when feeling threatened by “faggots” and germs. He is a clean-freak now and Van will have a “wow man” insight into what’s behind Matt’s hang-ups.

Tricia York (Peppermint Patti) and her side-kick Marcy* (Marcie), no longer tom-boys, do the ditzy party-girl thing – planning one at Marcy’s house – in the high school cafeteria, while Beethoven (Schroeder) hides out in the music room to avoid being bullied for being gay. Having become estranged, because Beethoven wants to protect his best friend from being bullied too, he and CB re-bond over the keyboards, where the plot takes a sudden and surprising turn.

Marcy’s party brings the hetero v homo sexual issues to a head and on the next school day everyone is still reeling. Meanwhile CB visits Van’s Sister (Lucy, who used to offer Charlie psychiatric advice) in the institution where she has been incarcerated for setting fire to the hair of Little Red Haired Girl (who was Charlie’s dream girl).

More than one reference is made to loners who one day bring a gun to school … but it’s a suicide that brings the play to its emotional climax and makes them all reassess. Cloying moralising and sentimentality are avoided because Royal stays true to Shultz’s ever-questing tone, not least by book-ending the play with CB communing with his Pen Pal, a silent ‘good listener’ who surprisingly replies – by letter – at the end and signs himself “CS”.

US-born director Lori B Leigh has taken Van’s “Us defines us” as pan human (rather than the US of A), which is certainly how most readers world-wide will have related to Peanuts. Thus, without relocating the story, the actors use their own voices rather than American accents, which works a treat. Adolescent cruelty – and humour – are universal.

David Goldthorpe’s well-centred and suitably earnest CB – he continues to be a ‘good man’ – anchors the production in truth. In a stand-out performance Paul Waggott brings such stunning depth and detail to Beethoven, one wonders if all the other characters have those dimensions too, in the writing. The angst-ridden and psychologically complex scenes between CB and Beethoven are painfully excellent.

Anna Harcourt has fun as CB’s Sister, commenting on, rather than ‘being’, the character in search of her true identity. She is the sole member of the drama club, and I can’t help but wonder if there is more pathos to be mined from her solo show about a caterpillar who would rather be a platypus than a butterfly.

Van the stoner is endearingly played by Theo Taylor, who manages to inject some of his trade-mark acrobatics into the role to good effect. Matt is very well nailed by Alex Greig, compelling us to see the vulnerability and confusion behind the odious behaviour that can nevertheless be attractive to equally confused young women.