What did the “Peanuts” comic strip teach kids who grew up on it in the 1950s and ’60s? That failure is sometimes inevitable but endurable. That true friends may be bizarrely quirky and false ones may be amiable flatterers. That the female sex can be assertive and competent, if often crabby, while the male sex can be sensitive without being weak. And that a dog is often the smartest mammal in any small group.

When “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” sticks to that philosophy – which is most of the time – it’s funny and poignant. (A lot of the vignettes come directly from Charles Schulz’s comic strips.) When it veers off into gooey sentiment in a way Schulz was careful never to do in his prime, it’s clumsy. Yet the mixture of self-knowledge and naïveté Schulz wrote so well comes through most of the time, and that part of the show hasn’t dated.

For once, Children’s Theatre of Charlotte has opened with a musical that isn’t a physical blockbuster or slam-bang series of big numbers. Director-choreographer Ron Chisholm worked from a 1999 Broadway revival, where Sally replaced Peppermint Patty, but he avoids traps into which that reportedly overblown version fell. (In a tribute to the absent character, ushers handed peppermint patties to departing playgoers on opening night.)

Instead of an airborne carpet or Peter Pan, the only thing to take flight is Charlie Brown’s kite. (It’s Charlie Brown’s kite, of course, so that can’t last.) There are no grand, rousing musical choruses, or even a chorus at all. Six characters, coming and going in various patterns, do all the emoting. John Bowhers’ simple set, where furniture floats in and out, suits the production well.

Writer-composer-lyricist Clark Gesner has made three of the kids memorable: woebegone Charlie Brown, hectoring Lucy Van Pelt and spirited, self-absorbed Sally Brown. Lucy’s brother Linus gets short shrift, pianist Schroeder brings little to the party, and Snoopy doesn’t seem as wildly fanciful as he ought to be. (He was the Schulz character who really captured the childlike ability to enter into a fantasy; the humans were far more prosaic.)

Ashby Blakely’s diffident manner and wide-eyed resignation make him an ideal Charlie Brown, but the women steal the show: Cassandra Hawley Wood is a perfect pepperpot of a Sally, and Lucianne Hamilton’s Lucy can be needy, frightening or an irresistible steamroller. She would surely grow up not to be a queen, as she dreams, but Maggie Thatcher.