“You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” But is he? Despite the uncanny musical inclinations, the pure earnestness and desire to live, Charlie Brown, played by Rob Morrison, is kind of a mope. At least now, in the flesh, he’s 110 minutes of entertaining self-deprecation, failure to launch, and song & dance.

The single biggest infusion of comic strip nostalgia possible, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” brings the 2D Peanuts gang to life on stage. Growing up, like most Cincinnati families, we got The Enquirer delivered. I loved the comics — my mom would leave them out for me and I’d read them before school. Like I imagine most other comic-reading kids felt, I always wondered why no one ever seemed to age. “Beetle Bailey,” the world-class-lazy GI first published in 1950, should have been in his 50s when I started reading about him.

You don’t have to wonder what the “Peanuts” gang looks like in early middle age. I can tell you, it’s exactly what you might expect. Linus still has his blanket, Lucy still rules the roost and Snoopy kills it on the drum kit.

There’s no plot. There is no story arc, bringing around any kind of dramatic resolution. The basis of this work is the “Peanuts” comic strip, and Clark Gesner has written a musical out of a series of them. Punctuated and elucidated by song, the performance touches on common “Peanuts” themes: Charlie as hopeless, Snoopy as a fighter pilot, Linus as a blanket-obsessive brainiac, Lucy as dangerously obsessed with Schroeder.

Each performer plays a variety of musical instruments, often swapping: piano, guitars, melodica, drums, harmonica, and even the grade-school-era recorder. It’s surprisingly well done — they must all be musicians to be cast in the play. There are guitar solos, ensemble songs, fugues, jazz numbers and more.

A prime example of the bombastic, unchecked audacity of this performance is Snoopy. Played by Armando Gutierrez, he’s a drummer, a talking adult man, and also somehow a convincing dog. There are no dog ears or dog snout. Just black jeans, a white JOE COOL shirt, and a leather jacket. The piece de resistance of his role is “Supper Time,” or, if you turned what a dog feels when his supper bowl comes into a 6-piece musical number punctuated by audience cheering, clapping and singing.

Honestly, I’m struggling to convey what it was that I saw. A comic strip comes to life, played by middle-aged actors playing children playing musical instruments. There are jokes and insults, outrageous reactions, audience participation and swings that descend from the rafters. The premise could, perhaps, be best described as the same childhood problems like homework and cute girls being addressed more eloquently by adults with the help of music. Does that help?

My advice is that if you go, come in with the right expectations. Instead of being a story about Charlie Brown, it’s everyone’s childhood brought to life, into a musical, and blown out of all expected proportion. You’re in for some laughs and some poignant memories about your own childhood, your own navigation of those personal, esoteric experiences.

John David Back is a Cincinnati native who lives and works in OTR. He’s an avid reader and a mediocre writer who loves the experience of art and beauty. Tell him what he should experience and send fan mail to johndavidback@gmail.com.