Writing Tips and Serial Seductions

Theater Review: Seminar @ Spirit Square

20160809166652467

By Perry Tannenbaum

We all know that politics, connections, and strategic socializing often figure into securing Hollywood production budgets and achieving Hollywood stardom. We’re apt to think of the proverbial casting couch as Tinseltown’s exclusive domain. But can the same tools also work in the literary world, where writers aspire to lucrative publication and enduring prestige?

 

You better believe it, playwright Theresa Rebeck tells us in Seminar, a surprisingly steamy — and sometimes dark — comedy that brings Three Bone Theatre to Spirit Square for the first time. The veneers of artistry, aesthetics, and collegiality rapidly disintegrate in successive encounters with a famed writer and his very exclusive fiction-writing class. Izzy, Douglas, Martin, and Kate all scrape together $5,000 apiece for the privilege of being praised, critiqued, berated, and mentored by Leonard in weekly sessions at Kate’s posh Upper West Side apartment.

Kate has been honing her story about a narrator obsessed with Jane Austen for so long that cleverness and craft are all that remain. Izzy’s writing, on the other hand, is so laced with sensuousness and sexuality that it rouses mighty urges in every man in the room — and she knows exactly what she’s doing. Douglas arrives with a fine literary pedigree, key connections, and a manuscript that is already under consideration by The New Yorker.

Martin has had the toughest time scraping up the necessary cash for tuition, so tough that he has been evicted from his apartment. He wouldn’t need to pay any rent if he could crash in one of Kate’s many extra bedrooms, but he’s oblivious to the possibility that Good Samaritan impulses might not be the primary reason why Kate says yes. There are more than a couple of things that Martin is oblivious to, and he’s very guarded about showing his writing to anyone, so he’s a useful person for Rebeck to have around for expositional purposes. So much must be explained to him until he becomes central to the story.

Meanwhile, it’s Izzy and her serial seductions that stir the pot and drive the plot. There’s actually an admirable amount of balance in Rebeck’s script, but in the Broadway production directed by Sam Gold, the important character seemed to be movie star Alan Rickman as Leonard, while the students often seemed to be mundane minnows swimming in his orbit.

Leonard is a revered writer who is still globetrotting on reporting assignments despite his literary decline, so Rickman’s aging celebrity was not amiss. And Rebeck delves so deeply into the mysteries of teaching and mentoring writers that our fluctuating assessment of Leonard’s efficacy emerges as more important than any other subject Seminar tackles. But Rickman’s aura, for better or worse, made Leonard appear above the politics, the exploitation, and the literary logrolling.

With Michael Harris in the role (and probably in the best form of his life), the fault lines in Leonard’s character — and his redeeming humanity — are more readily evident. Three Bone director Steven Levine doesn’t have the luxury of imposing a huge gulf between Leonard and his students from a celebrity standpoint, so we also discover who Leonard’s costar is a bit earlier in the game. Rickman’s fame — and stage presence — really didn’t allow for an equal in the Broadway production.

A subtler aspect of Rickman’s magisterial stature on Broadway was the stylish domain where Leonard held court. Ryan Maloney’s set design for Kate’s living room, flowing silk sheets for walls and simple furnishings, has an unmistakable elegance, not a word I’d apply to any of Three Bone’s previous efforts in NoDa over the past four years. But it’s Maloney’s evocation of a ratty artist’s apartment later in the action, complete with its telltale writer’s clutter, that had me flashing back to the Broadway production.

Outside of ivied university walls and politically correct quads, taboos against student-teacher hookups obviously don’t apply, but with Three Bone’s comparatively leveled playing field, it’s easier to see that Izzy is playing the guys to her advantage — and actually less apparent that Leonard is playing her. Karina Caparino augments the difference by emphasizing Izzy’s wantonness and her frolicsome spirit. The Asian who played Izzy on Broadway was a little brainier, cosmopolitan. This Izzy is Bohemian with more raw and exposed emotions.

That chimes well with Harris’s more vulnerable approach to Leonard. I found myself paying far closer attention to Leonard’s big monologue, where he addresses his past disgrace. For me, it was less of a rueful confession and more of a bitter outcry of victimhood this time around, accentuated by some deft lighting cues by designer Carley Walker. Unexpectedly, it’s the previously meek Martin who pushes the esteemed writer to open up.

Michael Harris and Scott Miller in Seminar.

So yes, I can declare that Martin, in his painful — at times, infuriating — evolution demands a performance on a par with Leonard’s, and Scott A. Miller certainly delivers. I’m sure it isn’t a coincidence that Levine elicits an outing from Miller that’s as extraordinary as what we see from Harris, arguably eclipsing Miller’s stellar work earlier this year at Children’s Theatre of Charlotte in the title role of Danny, King of the Basement.

I’m only wondering how Levine did it. It’s easy to suppose that Levine enabled Miller and Harris to look inside themselves and find things they had never discovered before. That’s a typical mythology applied to directors. But here I suspect that Levine opened up new depths in Rebeck’s text, for I must admit that I thought it was a far slicker piece when I left John Golden Theatre in 2012 than I did at last Thursday night’s opening.

Beth Killion’s costume designs for Douglas aren’t as loud as those I saw on Broadway, making the well-connected student less of an object of derision. I found that new twist as enjoyable as the others, but with three of Charlotte’s best actors bringing their A games to this local premiere, Paul Gibson’s shortcomings as Douglas were more glaring than they might be otherwise. To mesh better with this ace cast, Gibson’s cue pickup needs to be swifter and his delivery surer. When he settled down — conquered his opening night jitters? — Gibson offered us a nuanced rendering of Douglas’s sense of entitlement and his nonchalant insider’s knowledge, not cartoonish at all. But his difficulties had come when he needed to dominate.

Our hostess Kate has more complexities than Izzy, and she can be even more irritating than Martin with her stubbornness and preciousness. Becca Worthington is better at Kate’s priggishness than she is at projecting the embarrassment of her privileged wealth, but there are hidden dimensions to this Kerouac hater that go undetected by Martin until the scene changes — and Worthington is marvelously attuned to those devastating surprises.

Roguish “Rouge” Keeps Its Freshness

Dance Review: CC&Co.’s Rouge

379075_10150607398863084_1504680463_n

By Perry Tannenbaum

Now in its fourth year, Rouge began as a slightly naughty variety show featuring Caroline Calouche & Co.‘s signature aerial choreography, with a naughty cabaret twist that meshed well with its October timeslot – and a late 9:30 pm performance that was a novelty for dance in Charlotte. Compared to the Nutcracker Rouge that I sampled last winter in an off-Broadway production, the first two CC&Co. editions of Rouge barely grazed the possibilities of risqué dance. Absent from the spectacles at Booth Playhouse were the profusion of pasties, satyrs, fauns, and cross-dressing men that I witnessed in Greenwich Village, all ganging up on an innocent virgin and serving as her initiation into the rites of eroticism. So if the Charlotte troupe had no intention of following a similar trail, it was prudent for the company to retreat from October, when steamier saturnalia might be expected, to a sunnier timeslot in August. Here the modest moves toward cabaret decadence and S&M stylings actually seemed more daring.

Yet the move to a balmier season didn’t absolve Calouche & Co. of the obligation to embrace cabaret naughtiness with gusto. If the opening tableau with three couples intertwining downstage and four females behind them straddling chairs was any indication of how the company would attack the can-can, then I could be grateful that I was spared from seeing a kickline that would have proven they can’t-can’t. Couples went through the motions of sensuous contact without either the heat or the enjoyment that would bring the choreography vividly to life, and the women on those chairs did little more than occupy them. A “Take It Easy” duet with Javier Gonzalez and Sarah Ritchy, some segments aerial and others on the floor, generated a little heat, but the closest we came to flame was Calouche’s “It Takes Two” aerial coupling with Anthony Oliva, introduced by hostess/songstress Rachael Houdek as the evening’s BDSM segment and boasting black costumes to match.

Set to some orgiastic guitar blues, something in this aerial choreography was definitely simmering.

10424463_1495611417317853_930816821_a

Hosting for the fourth time, Houdek seems to get what CC&Co. is about much better than she did in her first two years, and her singing has improved as much as her poise, most noticeably on “Creep,” the penultimate number on the Rouge 2016 program. Keeping the show fresh were five other guest performers, including the Von Howard Project from New York. Dancing the choreography of Christian von Howard, this trio of dancers – Breeanah Breeden, Jake Deibert, and Tracy Dunbar – were the gray antithesis of an orgiastic rouge spirit as they performed “Seeker”: eerily fluid, urban, dystopic, and occasionally extraterrestrial. Notwithstanding their discordant vibe, I wished Von Howard Project had offered us second and third helpings.

I can warily say the same about Atlanta-based Nicole Mermans, who delighted me midway during the second half of the evening with her “Tousled” on an aerial sling. Aerial pieces rarely strive for comedy, but this one had slapstick elements, set to a klezmer score. Hopefully, other pieces Mermans has devised would be equally unique, perhaps on an assortment of apparatuses. After watching aerial acts for a number of years, I’ve concluded that the number of moves available on each apparatus – particularly the aerial silks – is probably more limited than the number afforded by such gymnastic apparatuses as the rings, the pommel horse, or the balance beam. So are the risks after the performer has mastered each skill.

536539565_1280x720

So I was pleased that Rouge presented the wide variety of equipment that CC&Co. has accustomed its audience to, including Gwynne Flanagan from DC on trapeze and Molly Graves from Vermont on aerial rope. The only guest soloist who disappointed was Jen MacQueen from Atlanta, who only showed me moves on the cyr wheel that already I’d seen many, many times since the days that Cirque du Soleil first began touring. To her credit, Calouche has fortified her troupe to such an extent that the aforementioned members of the troupe – Gonzalez, Ritchy, and Oliva – aren’t alone in being able to perform to the level of the guest artists. Sarah Small performed a gorgeous aerial solo silhouetted behind a translucent disc, choreographed to an instrumental adaptation of Dvořák’s “Moon Song,” and though he wasn’t airborne at all, Jake StainbackSarah Small’s talents as an ecdysiast were singular nevertheless.

After the busy opening and the Von Howard Project spot, there were other segments featuring three or more performers, including a bouncy bungee trio (with some unseen complicity up in the fly loft) and an aerial finale on a massive twin-cube apparatus that could accommodate four performers simultaneously. My favorite was the semi-spontaneous segment that brought us to intermission, which began with Houdek picking out a conspicuously gifted member of the audience to bust out a few of his startling dance moves. Then members of the company invaded the audience, pulling some choice prospects onstage – well, they discreetly avoided old codgers like me, anyway. All of these recruits began to show their stuff to some very festive music. I not only noticed a non-musical actor among the recruits but also a few moves from the others that were raunchier than any of the rehearsed choreography. Rouge may not be particularly wicked, risqué, or even particularly French, but it remains an impressive show – and it attracts an impressive crowd.

Girls’ Night Out With Card Tricks and Beefcake

Theatre Review: The Naked Magic Show

By Perry Tannenbaum

TNM - Christopher Wayne & Mike Tyler 2

It turns out that the two Aussies, Chris Wayne and Mike Tyler, were almost totally in the buff during the latter moments The Naked Magic Show – except for their body mics and the handy top hats they kept over their genitalia. But my curiosity about how much nudity I would see at McGlohon Theater last Wednesday (and how long I would see it) was preceded by some tingling suspense about who would turn out for the 9:30 performance.

There’s a lot to clean up after a performance of The Naked Magic Show, which mixes magic, comedy, and as much audience participation as I’ve ever seen. There’s one trick that involves everyone in the audience littering the hall while shouting “Fuck it!” as they let their confetti fly, and the show ends with sustained cloudbursts of glitter as the naked magicians “come” for the audience. So while it seemed strange that the house hadn’t opened when 9:30 rolled around, we didn’t realize how much cleanup and setup was going on inside the hall after the earlier 7pm show.

With this delay, there was more than the usual amount of time to mingle with the crowd in the McGlohon lobby — and to determine they weren’t the usual theater bunch. After years on the road, Wayne and Tyler may have been feigning curiosity when they bluntly asked who was out there. Date nighters? Gay guys? No, they were far, far outnumbered by the girls-night-out throng, their absolute dominance augmented by the awesome volume of their shrieking response.

Even when they were clothed, the Aussies’ magic wasn’t in an up-the-sleeve vein, trending toward card tricks and mentalist miracles. One fellow out of the audience entrusted his cellphone to the duo, putting it in a manila envelope among four or five others, and watching with growing concern after the envelopes were shuffled. Chris smashed one hidden phone after another with a mallet. In the upshot of this shuffling, shattering mumbo jumbo, the guy’s phone wound up in the butt of an inflatable sex doll.

Before that episode, the guys brandished a pair of inflatable penises, and Chris featured his preternaturally long tongue. But perhaps uncannier than tongue-zilla or the five-phone monty was the trick that lodged in everyone’s pocket or purse in red envelopes that ushers handed to us when we first entered the hall. When we were instructed to open them, we found four wallet-sized photos inside that we were instructed to shuffle and tear, face-down. After taking the top slip of paper, there was a long regimen of cutting, rearranging, and “Fuck it!” tossing as we discarded six of the remaining seven halves of photos, including some elements of choice that seemed to lead to a random outcome.

It took me over four days to figure out why the last remaining half mated perfectly with the half that I’d put in my shirt pocket before the elimination process. Odds against that were 6-to-1, right?

The end of the show, leading up to the celebratory cum-bustion, had an elegant structure to it, for Mike and Chris had a little competition to determine which of them would be the first to strip. Two eager ladies were chosen out of the audience to buckle and tie the guys into straitjackets, and the magician who escaped last would have to strip first. Well, one of the ladies — I forget whether it was Amanda or Maddie — was really eager for this sadistic pleasure, insisting that she switch from Mike to Chris for her tying tasks.

TNM - Christopher Wayne & Mike Tyler 1

Adding to the comedy, Chris tore his arms free from bondage before Amanda and Maddie were settled back in their seats, calling on a nearly-as-eager gay guy to do the retying. Chris seemed to be the glibber of the two escape artists, but Mike had the better abs. All I’ll say about the naked tricks is knife, rope, scissors, and another deck of cards.

The whole dynamic seemed to change when all the guys’ cheeks were finally exposed and the last volunteers walked onstage. With just two more cities left in their 32-city tour across the US and Canada, Chris had remarked early in the show that they had forgotten how different it could be performing in the round. Looking up in the balcony, he observed that the folks seated up on the sides of the stage were getting more than their money’s worth.

That made it all the more important for the woman holding the top hat over Chris’s package to keep a steady hand while he performed his rope trick. Compounding her anxiety, other ladies in the audience were loudly urging her to let it drop. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some of those lust-enflamed ladies had imbibed a drink or three. Perfect preparation.

Chris and Mike have moved on to Louisville and Indianapolis, but the steam hasn’t stopped in Charlotte. Parks and Recreation stars Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are promising to “yank the britches” off their real-life marriage in Summer of 69: No Apostrophe at Ovens Auditorium this week while Scorpio Nightclub hosts an epic three-day Miss Gay America Pageant on raunchy Freedom Drive. When those two sizzlers have come and gone, Charlotte’s supreme aerialists, Caroline Calouche & Company, will take over Booth Playhouse next weekend for three performances of Rouge, their cabaret-style presentation for mature audiences.

Nor are wholesome and serious shows in summer retreat. Disney’s least fantastical musical, Newsies, returns to Belk Theater with its inspirational ensemble of striking newsboys. Duke Energy Theatre gets two weekends of Seminar from Three Bone Theatre. Theresa Rebeck’s drama explores what happens in a writing class when the brilliant sought-after writer who is teaching this select group needs validation as much as his young students. Of course, there are different kinds of validation in this feast of seduction, manipulation, betrayal, and copulation — peppered with writing tips.

Perhaps this week’s most intriguing new show will open on Thursday at South End’s C3 Labs. Presented by TAPROOT in collaboration with Jeffrey Barninger of Union Shop Studios, Queenie’s Farewell Block Party is one part performance, one part art installation, and one part close-to-home history. During the interactive performance, the audience meets Queenie and her neighbors on the night before tenants of the South End Motel are evicted.

We don’t exactly live in a community that cherishes its heritage or the integrity of its neighborhoods. So even if Queenie’s party views the pros and cons of urban renewal objectively, it will call attention to the bull component of Charlotte’s ongoing bulldozing — a component that often seems forgotten by city boosters, developers, politicos, and craven journalists.

Midsummer Night’s Catastrophe

Theatre review: Miss Julie

By Perry Tannenbaum

There is danger beneath the summer moon in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie as a spoiled, wanton, and impulsive heiress toys with daddy’s dutiful and ambitious valet. But there are ambiguities about Miss Julie – a fairly wide latitude in how she can be portrayed – and the echoes of Strindberg’s 1889 script reverberate into Oscar Wilde’s Salome and a bunch of Tennessee Williams dramas, further complicating our response.

varwwwclientsclient1web2tmpphp5srz96.jpg

Shakespeare Carolina is giving us the opportunity to view Strindberg’s classic up close in a new production at the fine Johnson Hall black box on the Winthrop University campus. Up close, we can easily see that director S. Wilson Lee has skewed his casting a little younger than the 25 prescribed by the playwright for his title character and the 30 advised for Jean, her valet. Caitlin Byrne seems a little more innocent as Julie than Strindberg perhaps intends, a little less stung and desperate because her recent fiancée has broken it off.

Still we can see her kinship with Salome in her awareness of her allure, her earthy wantonness, her expertise at manipulation, and her seething desire to command the men who desire her – leading to Julie’s contempt for all of them. She’s just not as evil and cruel as Wilde’s wicked temptress. Nor does she completely enjoy the upper hand with Jean.

When he’s a few years older, David Hensley will be able to mix more of Jean’s worldliness in with his youthful confidence and ambition. Right now, when the master’s bell startles him, Hensley’s reaction looks inbred where his reflexive response should be at odds with his better judgment. But there’s enough self-assurance in this Jean for us to see that Strindberg considers him to be the Darwinian winner in his on-again-off-again romance with Julie.

If Hensley were a little more commanding, we’d see the parallels between Jean-Julie and Stanley Kowalski-Blanche DuBois more readily, but you’ll likely leave Johnson Hall perceiving the template. You really can’t miss the affinity between Julie and so many toxic women in heat that have proliferated since the days of Strindberg and Wilde.

She comes into the servants’ quarters from a Swedish Midsummer Eve celebration, exhilarated and maybe tipsy. We’ve already heard about the break-up of her engagement, her bold improprieties during the Midsummer revels, and it isn’t long after she arrives that Julie expresses her admiration for Jean’s dance moves. Kristin, the cook who believes Jean’s future domestic bliss will be with her, quickly senses the threat of Julie’s impulsiveness and caprice.

Gayle Taggart has Kristin beautifully measured. She’s prim and proper in her apron, equally alarmed by Jean’s gropings above his station and Julie’s dips below hers. Strindberg actually sets her age five years above Jean’s, in a region where marriage and family have become more urgent for Kristin than for Julie. With Taggart, that biological urgency pretty much disappears, subordinated to her fear of losing Jean. You could imagine her as older than Hensley, but I doubt it. What comes to the fore with Taggart is that Kristin is more of a woman than Julie, an element that spices up the drama.

With her conventional attitudes and pieties, you don’t think Kristin is going to matter, but in the denouement, she does.

Smokey and the Epic Hero

Theatre Review: O Brother

O Brother

By Perry Tannenbaum

In Greek legend, Odysseus was a man of many ways who sacked the sacred citadels of Troy, traveled widely, struggled valiantly, and suffered greatly. But even if this Homeric catalogue of achievements pales in comparison to the praise lavished upon presidential candidates at our quadrennial conventions, there’s something about the guy that continues to spark admiration – despite the fact that he was once captured and imprisoned.

Latterday tributes from Lord Tennyson and James Joyce to Ulysses (O’s Roman name) gradually humanized the Ithacan warlord and brought him down to life-size. Ethan and Joel Coen decided that wasn’t quite enough indignity to heap upon the mythic hero. The Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou not only presented Ulysses Everett McGill as an escaped jailbird, they made him a Mississippi hayseed. If any role George Clooney plays can be considered a hayseed.

On a ridiculously limited budget, Citizens of the Universe bring Odysseus down the social ladder a few more rungs with O Brother, for the costumes and backdrops by Mandy Kendall aren’t Hollywood. On the other hand, the newly unveiled performance space at NoDa Brewing Company – on North Tryon Street – can’t be accused of being Mississippi.

Trailblazing yet another new venue, COTU embraces an outdoor ambiance that is more picnic theatre than dinner theatre. Beer flows from the interior of the spacious new NoDa tavern, and grub is rustled up from a food truck you can’t miss on your way in from the parking lot. There’s a bluegrass trio at the side of the modest playing area: the Hashbrown Belly Boys, who start up before the odyssey begins. Very relaxed and homespun.

Energy amps up as soon as director Courtney Varnum, perky and pigtailed, steps forward to introduce the show. O Brother is only loosely based on Homer’s epic – and loose only faintly describes its trashy, Southern-fried, slapstick style. These are not realms usually explored by James Cartee and his COTU, but Varnum has been able to round up more than a couple of the usual suspects from past COTU navigations.

Tom Ollis is the one Citizen you would expect to fit in well in this new rusticated universe, playing “Pappy” O’Daniel, the gregariously corrupt Miss’sippi guvnah seeking re-election while hosting a Grand Ole Opry-style radio show on the side. Sort of a cross between Tennessee Williams’ Big Daddy, Huey Long, and Yosemite Sam the way Ollis plays him – mythologically, he’s Menelaus in the scheme of things.

Most surprising is Shane Brayton as our hero Ulysses, after playing opposite Ollis as an arrogant Richard the Lion-Hearted in The Lion in Winter. Down in the Delta, Brayton taps into hillbilly pluck, energy, optimism, and rascality in a way that I’d likely find irresistible if part of the audience weren’t partying and oblivious. Of course, persisting in the face of such loud inattention adds to the pluck factor, but I found the entire cast up to that challenge.

We need to listen all the more attentively because some of the actors’ names are flip-flopped with the names of the folk they play in the playbill. The most obvious of these is “Sheriff Cooley as Stephen West-Rogers.” While he isn’t quite as megalomaniacal as he was in Fight Club or as violently vehement as he was in Trainspotting, West-Rogers is more than sufficiently implacable and clueless as the Sheriff.

Make no mistake, all of these principals are surrounded by sidekicks or underlings that make them look like sages. “Pappy” has Michael Haynes as Junior O’Daniel and Jeremy Bryant as Pap’s political opponent, Homer Stokes, who turns out to have clout in the KKK. Sheriff Cooley has Justin Mulcahy as his standard-issue deputy, and Ulysses is saddled with Michael Anderson as Delmar O’Donnell and Josh Elicker as Pete Hogwallop – Varnum and Charlie Napier extend the deep-down hayseediness of the Hogwallop family.

Not counting the vocal trio of Ulysses’ daughters that doubles as the Sirens, three of the actors zip through multiple roles. Napier stands out as the aforementioned Wash Hogwallop, as a Blind Seer modeled on Teiresias, and as a marauding gangster with a chip on his shoulder, George Nelson, because he’s not the more infamous Babyface. All the great menaces of The Odyssey don’t appear in this hashbrown mashup, but we do get Scotland Gallo as “Big Dan” Teague, certainly Polyphemus with his eyepatch, and Kendall as Penny, Ulysses’ wife.

All of Penelope’s famed suitors coalesce into one Vernon T. Waldrip (Napier again) and, with this Ulysses, Kendall’s infidelity doesn’t play as sluttiness so much as cold pragmatism. A ne’er-do-well jailbird – as opposed to an MIA hero – should cause a sensible wife to make new plans, even in the backwoods. Calypso’s shtick in the journey gets merged into the three singing Sirens – Becca Whitesmith, MoMo Hughes, and Laura M Lee.

As you’ve no doubt divined, Odysseus’ sea voyage and his epic struggle to return home after the Trojan War have been downsized to a comical chase triggered by Ulysses’ jailbreak. Toss in the bluegrass music and it shouldn’t be surprising if O Brother sometimes reminds you of Smokey and the Bandit – without the same Hollywood charisma from the lead rascal. Igniting the chase, Ulysses cons Delmar and Pete into joining him in the escape by enlisting them in a quest for a treasure that he has hidden at the bottom of a valley soon to be flooded to create a dam. Echoes of Deliverance, another bluegrass bromance.

Only here, the music is more deeply woven into the storyline. For along the way, the three escaped white men hook up with Tommy Johnson, a black musician who claims to have gotten his phenomenal skills in a deal with the devil, a la Robert Johnson. On one of their stops before they break up, the quartet cuts a record as the Soggy Bottom Boys. It’s at these key musical moments – and subsequently at his KKK lynching – that we encounter yet one more familiar COTU personality, James Lee Walker II, best remembered for his one-man presentation of Karl Marx.

Walker is a bit humbler this time around. Everybody is. Sifting through the distractions, I’d say that Koly McBride’s O Brother tribute/arrangement of the Coen Brothers’ film is among the very best adaptations COTU has ever done. If the ratio of audience to partyers can be boosted significantly this weekend, the experience will be even better.

James Cartee: The Exit Interview

Theatre

By Perry Tannenbaum

 varwwwclientsclient1web2tmpphp3fmp82

With the closing of Citizens of the Universe, there’s a lot more to unpack besides the daring of its founder, James Cartee, the history of his company, and the multiple finales he has planned between now and December. COTU’s end isn’t the same as the flameouts of Charlotte Repertory Theatre and Carolina Actors Studio Theatre (CAST), but it’s symptomatic of the Charlotte theatre scene.

So here’s the full, edited Cartee interview – with more of the drive, the difficulties, and the vision that made COTU go, more lessons and highlights, and the lowdown on why Cartee is leaving.

Perry T: How, when, and where did Citizens of the Universe begin?

James Cartee: COTU got its start back in 2001 in Greenville, SC. I had washed up there after a few years of gallivanting about the planet and discovered some of my fellow university droogs had come ashore there as well. I hadn’t actually been on stage or doing “true theatre work” at the time. I had taken a 3-year break from theatre after a disastrous performance of Complete Works of William Shakespeare (a show where I also worked props) at Centre Stage South Carolina.

Some of my fellow compatriots thought it’d be a gas to lace a snack they gave me with acid before a show. All I care to say about that is: I didn’t care for the joke and I didn’t want to have anything to do with theatre for 3 years. But after three years – you get that itch.

The only problem was that in Greenville at the time there were no parts for a 20-year-old. I teamed up with a college friend of mine, Andrew Bryant, who was also feeling the need for theatre and having the same issues I was – too old for the kid stuff, too young for everything else.

We had run into each other randomly and it always ended the same way – with us bitching about there being a need for diversity in our local theatre. One night – over a bit too much rum – we agreed (more like dared each other) that we would put on a show. I’d been working in sports entertainment and due to an accident at the time, I decided that going back on stage was not in the cards.

Not being really available for the stage – I wanted to direct. I mean, come on! I did that one weird show in a college showcase, why not go for it again! I knew all we really needed was a space. I started looking.

A popular spot had been forced to move to a new location, so I went and pestered them. They had a stage, lights, and some sound so that part of my job would be done. Eventually, I conned this spot – owned and run by Kathy Laughlin, John and Stephen Jeter – into letting us use their new music hall, The Handlebar, for a weekend of one-acts. (http://www.handlebar-online.com)

Was there really a group of founding Citizens, or was it pretty much your one-man universe (with assorted stars and satellites) from the start? Where did the name come from?

Andrew and I buckled down and directed some David Ives one-acts. We decided we would each direct our shows under competing company names for some reason that I have now forgotten. His was Lightbringer Industries, and mine – ‘cause I had actually forgot about this until the day we had to print programs – was from a line in a play I was directing.

In that show, “Sure Thing,” a guy tries to pick up a girl, and each time he fails, there is a bell and the scene restarts. At one point, he stands and declares himself – A CITIZEN OF THE UNIVERSE. A girl I fancied at the time liked it and I needed a name on the fly so we went with that.

IMG_0891

We opened September 13th… 2001. That show was what I would call a success – for what it was. We as a group decided to do another weekend. After that, Andrew and I decided to do another show – Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead – where I would direct and he would star.

Somehow I conned the Handlebar into letting us use their space again. Since I was directing, we did it under the moniker of COTU. We pulled about 250 people per show for three days, mainly due to our connections with the local high schools who were smack dab in the middle of Hamlet studies.

Andrew and I started this, but after R&G, Dan A. R. Kelly, Traysie Amick (both fellow alumni chums) and another theatre local by the name of Jason Bryant (no relation to Andrew) concluded there was a market for our fledging idea. We formed up and became – the Citizens of the Universe. Mainly ‘cause we already had two shows with that name attached to it.

I’ve used the moniker wherever I plop down and do some shows, including with friends down in Orlando. They still run a theatre to this day, not COTU but affiliated.

Did you even start out with an implicit or explicit mission – if so, what?

At first, what we wanted was to provide a place for thespians between the ages of 20 and 40 to have a chance to explore theatre in Greenville, SC. It was to be an outlet for our original work and a test lab to help us learn/relearn/unlearn/hone what we had kinda been taught in college or a chance to have a go at something we didn’t know at all.

Now here, there was no plan. No mission – just go out and do shows. I took on a mission after a time because I’m weird like that, but here in Charlotte we started off doing shows just to do them.

Was there a special niche that your company was intended to fill?

We wanted an alternative to the Harvey, Brigadoons, and 1776’s that played on repeat in Greenville. You had the Warehouse Theatre, which was playing it safe at the time to secure dollars as they transitioned into a more professional theatre.

We wanted to be a dirty, gritty theatre who could perform anywhere at any time. We wanted to be fringe but we were too stupid at the time to consider ourselves that. Greenville didn’t know what to do with us – we actually got a show banned because of Bob Jones – Creation of the World and Other Business by Arthur Miller. The reason they objected to that show was that Jesus was being played by a black man. Meanwhile, across downtown… because we were running two shows at the same time, I was having a guy jack off on another guy dressed as a horse – in a horse stable – while doing Equus. No one said one damn word about it.

My favorite moment from that time was when Doug McCoy of Center Stage waltzed over to our table at the Stax Omega Restaurant – this man trained me in high school, so we were old friends – and told us our little theatre was cute. That he enjoyed our show, but if we really wanted to do theatre to come work for him.

I love that old queen – god rest his soul – but he was one of the reasons why we were doing what we were doing. His theatre was the most “out there theatre” in town, and they were doing Li’l Abner and Company. To be fair, they also did Wit and As Bees in Honey Drown that year.

Here in Charlotte, I wanted to fill the gap of fringe theatre. There wasn’t any here. Some would say there still isn’t. I didn’t set out to mainly do films on stage but that is what brought people – brand new audience members – in. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone walk up to me and say, “This was my first time for going to the theater. This was fantastic! Is all theatre like this?”

I’m not sure how many theatres will squish a toy bird filled with jello on your sir, but sure. All theatre is like this – go see some!

This is something we sorely need more of here. So, I guess you can say I fell into it.

You’ve presented theatre in other places before you came to Charlotte, and you surely have presented theatre in a lot of different places in Charlotte. So what’s with the Gypsy wandering?

The best education in life is travel. If you have the opportunity, go everywhere. I love seeing life and the world… which stands in contrast to the other side of my mask that wants to turn this planet into a new asteroid belt.

I’ve never felt at home anywhere, personally, except behind the wheel of whatever I’m driving across country. That being said, I’ve always been drawn to Charlotte for some damn reason I can’t quite identify. I love the South… I was born here. It’s in my blood. I also love old New York… pre-Giuliani and Buzzard’s Bay in Massachusetts and Amsterdam and Sidney and Denpasar and Biscayne Beach.

I’ve been a part of many circuses as a clown/fool/jester/mascot. Meeting people, drinking, and having fun knowing that you’re gonna move on to a whole new crop of folk is exhilarating to me. I do have to say – this last go round as a Tortuga Twin did throw me for a twist.

I had just really come into my own here in Charlotte and what the fuck did I do? I went on the road for four years with a Ren fest group. It was a crossroads of ideas and I’m still not sure if my personal GPS gave me the best directions on that one.

As far as being a theatre without a home here in Charlotte. I find it makes me and my crews quick on our feet, able to adapt to problems quicker and – quite frankly – better than almost any other artistic group in the city practicing the craft of theatre. I can put on a show anywhere at any time.

That was something I wanted to do way back in 2001 and probably is born out of my commedia roots. Having a space is great, but I’m a poor honkey and poor honkeys don’t tend to keep theatre spaces. The good side of that is I don’t ever have to worry about going through what ATC [Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte] is going through. Or UpStage and those members of the LIT [League of Independent Theatres] who found themselves without a place to put up their works cheaply. Or Off Tryon or Barebones or any other of those many, many theatres out in the graveyard of Charlotte arts.

Not having a space to put up your spectacle is nonsense. You can put on a show in a parking lot. I fear many people here have a very narrow mind when it comes to how you do theatre.

That being said, it has become increasingly hard to do work here as we allow more and more things to be bulldozed to make way for people who may be coming or maybe not. Overall, it makes for a more resilient company in my opinion – one that doesn’t fold ‘cause you don’t know where you are going to hang your lights.

How and why did COTU resurface in Charlotte?

The Rocky Horror Show, drugs, Jim Yost, John Hartness, Chris O’Neill, Barbizon, the Milestone, two women, and you. It’s a complicated formula. The Rocky show I was lucky enough to play Riff Raff in for the Spartanburg Shoestring Players fully awoke the theatre diva in me.

Charlotte was rife with new theatres and great opportunities! I WANTED to be part of theatre, and this community beckoned. Where there was an inter-theatre softball game, tons of small theatres, Artbomb… the MTA and 24 theatre shows. It was a big city without the cost.

For a beleaguered soul like mine at the time, it was something that felt like “home,” so here I plopped. Especially since my girl at time needed some space. So why not move two hours away! It was then where I actually put in some time to begin being part of this community.

Jim Yost and John Hartness gave me my first opportunities. Over and above that, I worked with anyone who needed a hand and doing whatever needed to be done. It allowed me to do something on nearly every stage in town. Then – a lovesick fool – I left Charlotte to follow my heart’s desire to Yellowstone. (I put up a show there ‘cause I was bored.)

When that relationship – predictably – didn’t work out I ended up back in Greenville. Very shortly thereafter, I met a gal at a GWAR show here in Charlotte and it was love at first fake bloodbath. However, when her dealer was decapitated, I said, “I’m moving to Charlotte, wanna join me?”

Once back, I worked with every place I could find – again – while waving as Uncle Sam on the side of the road and giving numbskulls directions for OnStar. By then, the South End Performing Arts center was gone and with it so many of the small theatres that had been one of the main reasons for me being here in the first place. Then O’Neill restarted Shakespeare Carolina and John Hartness directed Hamlet.

During this time, Hartness gave me a tech job at Barbizon – which kept me here. THEN – your review of Hamlet enabled the director in me. When I left for Yellowstone, I had my pick of places to do work. By the time I got back less than a year later… there was virtually nothing. Queen City had not come into its own yet… Collaborative Arts was just starting out. There was OnQ starting to make its first push… Vickie Evans was on the outskirts of my radar…. But. There was no fringe.

Nothing was picking up the vacuum left by Barebones and Epic Arts and Innovative and … I can keep going. I mean, there was CAST… and that meant long rehearsal periods, and while the risk was there, there wasn’ t the excitement of being out in the element. They had no true grit!

Yeah, I just called CAST out for playing it safe. I mean – the worst show I have ever seen was produced at CAST – White Man Dancing. This bothered me – greatly (and not just that show!). The director in me said, “Fuck it – let’s get to work.” I still had all my old files and ideas.

61814_440697812807_371131652807_4986988_7262573_n

Before Hamlet closed I had worked out a plan to do Trainspotting – the script I had been hunting for ten years – at the Milestone. A rather cold (it was winter at the Milestone), but monumental success.

Artistic creativity traditionally travels east to west where theatre is concerned, great Broadway comedies and dramas getting turned into movies. Traffic in the other direction usually involves adding musical scores to proven Hollywood hits. So where did you come up with the idea of adapting favorite films to the stage without layering on songs, music, and dance?

I chose Trainspotting because I fucking loved the film. I had read that it was play before it was a movie back in college but could never find a copy of the script. During Hamlet, I made a mission to find this play – not to put it on, just to find it. I did find it – in New Zealand. A limited press of four plays by Harry Gibson. It was an expensive book that I wish I still owned. (I drunkenly gave it away to… Matt Cosper?).

The play was fantastic and by Hamlet’s close, I already moved on putting it on stage. I had an idea to print color programs – and my gal at the time had come across a large set of expanded CD sets, which we stuffed with local band CD’s and songs that played throughout the show. In the aftermath, I “realized” people didn’t come to see the new kids on the block but to see Trainspotting.

So I decided to press the point. My thought was, if I can get people who have never been to see a theatrical show – or haven’t in years – I could trick them into seeing something they know. Hook ‘em! Then pull an Uncle Vanya on them. Open up the viewer pools, right? What I missed was, some of the people seeing Trainspotting were looking for the folks like the ones running Three Bone and Appalachian Creative.

They had no idea what to do with me. So I was alone in the theatre community again, but I was pulling people who didn’t attend Uncle Vanyas. Somehow, I stumbled into a niche. There IS a hungry audience who LOVE live performance, but they want stories they are familiar with.

Now on the song and dance bit. I hate musicals. For every Little Shop, you have 40 The Last Star Fighters. This whole trend of just putting shit out there that had some sort of film source material with a slapdash music behind it ‘cause that’s what people say the masses want – is shite. Utter shite. And it is reflected in what is on stage. Crap music… crappier adapted story. Maybe some good dancing and definitely great lighting, effects, and costumes.

You need those to hide the fact that the work sucks. Not the performances – in most cases – but the way the story is being retold. Take away all those bells and whistles – are you still telling a story or just bouncing from one song to the next? Personally, I feel you get more from the story without the song and dance.

There’s more nuisance to a play and it relates more to your audience. But just in case it doesn’t, sit in their laps while throwing vomit and shit at them. All I know is that I don’t want Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs to do a whole musical number about cutting off a fucking ear. Fuck that. Cut the ear off and let the blood drip.

1010041_10151314531477185_1316306004_n

What I hope have been able to offer is for the viewer to move past what we can expect from a script we already know in one format and bring to light new aspects of those familiar moments. Eternal Sunshine, for example – I had quite a number of people tell me they hated the film but loved the stage show. It made them want to go back and watch the movie – making them rethink why they remembered the film in the first place.

If you added music to those, I feel it would lose resonance. I mean – I play up the comedy ‘cause I’m a hack, but even then, what I was hearing from a lot of our audiences was that what was on the page leaped out into life and grabbed you by the balls. Much more so than any song and dance or even on the screen.

How do you decide on which movies you want to stage, and what sort of difficulties do you encounter? Have there been instances of false starts, frustrating failures, forbidden rights, or just plain fuck-it’s-I’ve-changed-my-mind?

Trainspotting was a show I wanted to do ‘cause I loved the movie back in college. And the book I read after seeing the movie. After that, I thought to myself, what else is out there? That didn’t go very far because most translations just end up being fucking musicals.

It was like that until I focused on what I thought would be good to translate to stage, coupled with movies I liked or directors I was fond of and crosschecked that with books that had been turned into movies. I found that Fight Club had been done in Seattle and tracked it down. Tarantino [Reservoir Dogs] was another – but there is no book for him, just the movie script. That took a while to get any answers on, but several theatres have mounted that as a play, and I did research through them.

For a while, that was my method – finding out that another theatre had done a show somewhere in the world and pestering the crap out of them to find out how. Sometimes I made decisions by asking the social media world what it wanted to see. Adapting a script meant getting someone from a distribution company, the writer, and production teams to sign off on it.

That always means a mixture of editing and adapting. Some were easy – such as Night of the Living Dead (which is public domain), and others were…complex. Like Eternal. That script still needs another 20 pages chopped off.

There are those you can’t do – I desperately want to bring Nightmare Before Christmas and Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas to stage (both Disney. Anything Disney is off the table.) – and others that are way too much of a burden to bring to life. Like Clue. You have to ask Hasbro for the rights – but they say you need to get the rights from Paramount, who will tell you to talk to Universal… who tells you to talk to Hasbro.

Thing is, once you get Hasbro to sign off, Samuel French comes in and complains about the Cluedo script they have and demand that you pay royalties there as well – making the whole thing rather expensive or another protracted timeline between companies talking to one another.

But it has been done before. In fact- there is such a demand for the Clue script these days that I have been informed that they are attempting to make an official version that will be marketed out by HASBRO proper, removing Samuel French, Universal, and Paramount from the equation altogether.

I suspect as soon as that hits the market Theatre Charlotte will drop a pretty penny on it- unless ATC survives it’s current homelessness. There were some change-my-mind shows, like “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.” Desperately wanted to do that show but backed out of doing it for cost and space on the calendar.

You also encounter scams. I’ve been scammed by a company that didn’t have the proper rights and had to scuttle a show because of it right on the eve of opening. Frustrating as hell and puts a strain on the ole ticker.

Then there’s just bad scripts. Like Clockwork Orange. The official adaptation is terrible. Just plain terrible. That’s one where I was like “Fuck this script.” There are other versions but getting those have proven to be painstakingly hard.

There’s also the rare idea that doesn’t pan with available scripts- like M.A.S.H. and The Land of the People Who Do What They Want (better known as V for Vendetta). The MASH ideas would have involved using the local reserve for equipment, an uncle for a helicopter, and a local high school for a football field. You’d then follow the show in a living 4077 [hospital]. You could follow any character – a la Punchdrunk theatre style entertainment.

With V for Vendetta there was a translation issue – the play was in Norwegian… and my idea would have been a follow-the-show event much like Disturbance. The translating ended up being a bit too much to handle so I scuttled it.

There a few translations to stage out there I’ve heard of but never found except a new one – adapted by Sean Mason out of Manchester. I’ve already contacted him and he and I are talking about how I can bring it to the stage in the future for a US premiere.

Let me finish on one that is a movie but not why we were doing it: The Man in the Iron Mask. I wanted to do a big sword show since Princess Bride. Big swashbuckling scenes… I actually wrote a Pirate script that was awful. The concept was sound, but man – I couldn’t handle the story I was trying to write then.

I may go to work on it again soon – who knows? But when I approached Mandy Kendall with the big sword idea she jumped to her favorite writer – Dumas. I didn’t want a 3 Musketeers play and she suggested Iron Mask. We got to work, and I did most of the adapting of the script from the source material. A thoroughly fun adventure as I had never actually read any of the Musketeers stories.

60853_440698412807_371131652807_4987004_8269480_n

What do you look back on as your best productions?

Trainspotting at Story Slam is perhaps the closest that came to the vision I had in my head to make it to the stage. The Milestone version had my widest scope of inclusion, like with local bands and such. Lion in Winter was a fantastic show and for me personally, I believe that is my best work.

As far as overall idea? Big Labowski, Princess Bride, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Which were the most fun to be involved in?

Disturbance in Whitechapel. It was a unique idea – for me at least. And running around setting up bodies, explaining what was going on to cops, getting spaces to let us do what we were doing, and actually researching/writing the damn thing was probably one of the most fun times I’ve ever had on a project. Second time through, I put up stage curtains on all the windows, bought a bunch of wine, and hunkered down in my Ripper cave for 48 hours.

Then again this list: Big Labowski, Princess Bride, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind all make the top as well.

fightclub

Was Fight Club the ultimate nightmare, or was there worse?

Don’t get me wrong – Fight Club was a logistical nightmare. I kept losing spaces and Marlas… and there was that train and the rain…. but that was a cakewalk compared to having to deal with the Chop Shop during Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Jay – the owner – is a wonderful guy, but he just doesn’t get what it takes to do theatre. Or be an audience member.

Often he would come in with someone and talk loudly during the show. He even did that one night at SEEDS during Lion in Winter. We all busted ass to get R&G together, and I broke down in the greenroom on our final night ‘cause he had been telling me about an hour before show that he was shutting us down at a certain time – mainly ‘cause the audiences weren’t that big for R&G.

He was being a dick about it, so I panicked. Tania Kelly, Megan Stegall, and I worked out a way to leapfrog through scenes to bring down the run time. Only problem is, and this is a good problem, the last night was standing room only. We packed the place. The look on his face when he walked in halfway through the first act – and during an entrance from that side – was priceless. We didn’t cut a single line and ran over about 5 minutes.

There have been other headaches. Most of those led to aborted shows, or debacles like the Queen City Fringe. Probably the most troublesome all around was a night when Colby Davis showed up drunk to a night of Eternal Sunshine during its second run. He continued to drink during the show and took some liberties on stage with the actresses that were never rehearsed. I’ve never had such a breakdown in cast trust and the resulting alienation before or since.

To this day, the decision not to replace him for the rest of the run has haunted me. It directly affected the show, the mindset of people working with me afterwards, and many of my personal relationships. It was a rookie directorial mistake and one I should have been more prepped for.

What are the best things that you’ve found about the Charlotte scene since your arrival in 2008 – and what has really pissed you off?

Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been popping in and out of Charlotte since 1995. When I moved here on this current run back in ‘05, I had a pretty rosy attitude about Charlotte and the theatre here. One of the best things about Charlotte is the ability to create and the amount that was being created. There was once a lot of places to put on shows. Not that there isn’t now – but once again, the days are gone when you could pick and choose from what was a healthy community.

Add to that the loss of so many buildings, plus the fact that everyone has become money-starved since around 2012, and that picture isn’t so great anymore. One of the cool things I’ve found out as of late is the hidden African American theatre here. There’s some great work going on there that doesn’t get a lot of press. I guess that’s true all around. Charlotte has an abundance of people who wish and want to create and want to play. That’s one of its best parts.

I don’t think we utilize that base well enough. The theatre community itself is very caring about the idea of theatre, but they have little want to present a united front to show the general public that we do indeed have a theatre community outside of touring shows.

As for what pisses me off? City Council. Toll lanes. Pat McCrory. The statement theatre is dead. The idea that in a city of 800,000 people, we don’t have a professional theatre. Even worse – that no one outside of the community seems to care. That that very same caring community dismisses people like myself when I’m warning of bullshit like what happened to ATC.

I started my own theatre column three years ago and have been bitching a lot on those pages about our inability to save our theatre groups. I’m pissed that our community is so dismissive of each other. That an organization like the LIT that claimed to be inclusive were immediately exclusive. I’m pissed that that mentality runs throughout the community. I dislike cliques even though I’m actually part of that problem myself.

I dislike that newcomers have a hard time getting a foot in the door. Theatre minds here rarely take a chance… and even when they do, it’s the safest option. I’m not saying be dangerous like those assholes at Chicago’s Profiles Theatre. There’s a difference between daring and dangerous.

When we had a chance to gather together to make a comprehensive plan for the theatres in town, we just let it die. I’m referring to the meeting that the A&S Council called at CAST. Had a great turnout. We separated into groups, met a few times and it became readily apparent that some people just didn’t want others to participate. To be a community, you have to be ready to accept everyone out there – mimes and all.

Nothing came of that whole shebang, and look where we are today. No CAST. ATC is not functioning. Most of the fringe groups have withered.

I have to say artistic morale is quite low, and it shouldn’t be. I have met so many wonderful and talented people here, and I want them all to be able to put up the work they want to make. That being said, there’s a lot more to be pissed about right now than happy, unless you’re doing theatre outside of Charlotte.

Do you think you’ve made an impact – and if so, how would you describe it?

Oh, yeah. I think I helped spur the last surge of storefront theatre. I remember going to work at the Children’s Theatre and talking with Matt Cosper about GONZO and Trainspotting. He said, “I want to do that. I wanna do what you do, Cartee.” Now if memory serves – he had been doing that a few years earlier. Actor’s Farm?

At any rate, as Fight Club was going up – Machine Theatre started its engines. Stephen Seay was starting his own group independently. I feel that between the three of us, we jumpstarted the small theatre scene. Seay was pulling in his demographic at Petra’s. Machine was getting a high five from the theatre community, and I was pumping the general public with shows like Reservoir Dogs.

25069_349459549027_518199027_3506913_8004455_n

2 or 3 years running, an actor who got their first Charlotte part by running into COTU auditions ended up becoming Newcomer of the Year. There are a multitude of folks who started at COTU who are now bigger parts of the theatre community. These people may never had joined up due to the mindset of a lot of theatres in the area. Michael Ford got the bug in letting me do GONZO at the Mill… that directly led to UpStage.

I could be vain here – but it seems that where I went, people seemed to follow. I started doing theatre in a space and – lo and behold – others wanted to come and play too. I felt confined in a space and moved to another – suddenly others were there as well. I think – while not the first by a long shot – I did lead the charge for others even if only in terms of space.

Ideas were like that as well – like the Fringe Fest. Not the first attempt at a fringe (despite BOOM saying so), but the idea on the scope is still something I believe Charlotte needs. The aforementioned BOOM it a direct result of that effort. I like to think I’ve grown talent pools and opened Charlottean masses to theatre that is more approachable for them (‘cause not everyone wants to see a Neil Labute, and let’s face it, Uncle Vanya).

I’ve also been up in everyone’s happy little spot telling them everything is not as kosher as it seems. We have major problems, and we have to deal with them – and some of those problems are very much our fault. People don’t like hearing that, but it does make them think. I was only too happy to help.

What made you decide to close up shop in Charlotte?

Charlotte did. One of the reasons I moved here was cost. It was cheap. In the past three years, everything has shot up beyond what I want to pay. That alone didn’t do it. I have great issues with this state politically and even more so locally. The great bulldozing that has gone on has greatly depressed me. Destroying the neighborhoods I enjoyed living in has only made me want to flee this place altogether. Artistically, I feel trapped. I find there is little support for theatre in Charlotte in general.

Living and working in this art is a mite hard anywhere, so to have extra obstacles thrown in your path becomes untenable after a time. Artistically, I need a new canvas. I want to be surrounded by people with some differing thoughts and more accepting. I want to live in an accepting community that seeks to be stronger rather than one who tears itself apart every few years.

I’ve also become a bit of a detriment to my own shows by simply speaking my mind. You piss off enough people and they, in turn, like to poison the well. To be fair – some of that piss and vinegar is warranted. I try not to be a bad guy, but sometimes I just am. Mainly due to lack of funds.

The short and sweet of it is, Charlotte has become untenable for artists like myself to live and work. So: I want to run away to another, more accepting community where I can get better pay and have the work I want to create be better received by my fellow artists and not just the public.

What are your plans after December 10?

I have a position in Austin I’m pursuing that will open up at the beginning of the year. I’m planning on taking a year off from theatre to write. I have several shows I want write, and I’m working on a book. I do plan on being back here in some form next summer with O’Neill’s Shakespeare Carolina. What, I can’t say out loud yet.

221840_10150178400312491_507372490_6723856_5912590_n

After that, I’m jumping hardcore into theatre there and helping out as much as this miserable flesh will let me. I also plan on starting a COTU branch there.

I’m not moving just to say fuck you Charlotte. There are long term plans – like starting up a COTU circuit. Creating a talent circuit and do short exchanges between cities. My friends are still in Orlando, I have a man in Baltimore, and more than a few Citizens here are threatening to take up the mantle and run shows.

See, here’s the thing about COTU I think people have not truly gotten. COTU – its core concept – is that anyone can do this. And everyone should. Once you do a show with us, you are a Citizen and are absolutely free to go and start your own thing or do your COTU show. You can request any and all resources that may be available or get direction on where to do a show or who may be available for tech, acting, and other such things.

I can be utilized from afar, as was the case when I was in Oklahoma and wrote, did the press, and set up a space for Nick Iammatteo’s production of Sid and Nancy here in Charlotte. There’s a team of ladies who are good candidates for a new core. I encourage it.

As for me – it’s getting close to about time to hit the old dusty trail. But I do have a few more shows first!

COTU firebrand founder James Cartee pulls the plug

Going down in a blaze of glory

By

We’ve had one professional theatre company in Charlotte that drew the likes of Hilary Swank, Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Andre De Shields, Emily Skinner and Bonnie Franklin to town. Another company was so prolific that they often had two productions running at the same time in their final days. Scores of fringe companies, held up by dogged determination and duct tape, have sprouted up, wrought miracles on shoestring budgets, and disappeared overnight.

James Cartee in Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

  • James Cartee in Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

So did the pro company, Charlotte Repertory, and the prolific company, Carolina Actors Studio Theatre — both trashed by rogue boards of directors.

But we’ve never had anything like James Cartee and his Citizens of the Universe. Never bedeviled by meddlesome bean counters, Cartee is closing down his company and leaving Charlotte — with his own special flair. One of his final shows, O’Brother, is up and running at NoDa Brewery as we go to press. Another, Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis, opens next week. Four more Citizens productions are in the works before COTU brings down the curtain on its final show on December 10.

The company’s name came from “Sure Thing,” the first short play in David Ives’ All in the Timing, which was the first show COTU co-produced in 2001, over in Greenville, SC. A comic sketch with a multitude of false starts, “Sure Thing” was an apt reference, since COTU popped up afterwards in multiple places, including Orlando and Yellowstone, before taking root here.

Their first Charlotte effort, Trainspotting at the Milestone Club (a frosty success in late January of 2008), was emblematic of what made COTU unique. From the beginning, Cartee’s shows voyaged to places nobody else had considered before: Fight Club in a Central Avenue parking lot, Reservoir Dogs at Studio 1212, Princess Bride at the Breakfast Club, Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis at The Graduate, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Chop Shop, Titus Andronicus in the back patio of Snug Harbor, A Disturbance in Whitechapel along multiple streets and venues in NoDa, The Lion in Winter at SEEDS, Nosferatu in the backlot of Salvaged Beauty, and Sid and Nancy at The Mill (before it became UpStage).

Cast of COTU's Fight Club. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

  • Cast of COTU’s Fight Club. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

Cartee considers his company fringe theatre, but his roaming, pioneering spirit as he invaded new territories established COTU as Charlotte’s quintessential guerrilla group. The trailblazing has left lasting marks. Some of these previously unexplored places, most notably UpStage, caught on as performance venues with other companies.

Just as important are Cartee’s colonizing instincts. The third — and likely last — Carolina Arts & Theatre Awards will be staged at Snug Harbor in September, gathering the community’s theatre artists together and celebrating their achievements. More fundamental was the Queen City Fringe Festival of 2013. Cartee’s attempt to set NoDa, Plaza-Midwood and Elizabeth ablaze with live performances didn’t exactly ignite those neighborhoods, but it demonstrated that it could be done — paving a way for other groups and artsy shenanigans, like this year’s successful BOOM Festival.

Yet the idea of taking favorites and cult movies and turning them into live theatre — never adorning them with song and dance — remains Cartee’s exclusive turf. That mission actually evolved from an epic 10-year quest to find the playscript for Trainspotting that Cartee heard about back in his college days. He tracked down a rare book of four plays by Harry Gibson in New Zealand, paid a pretty penny for it, and found it more fabulous than he’d expected.

But it was audience reaction that convinced Cartee that he was on to something. People weren’t coming to see Trainspotting out of curiosity for a new group in town, so much as they were connecting with the movie title.

“There is a hungry audience who love live performance,” says Cartee, “but they want stories they are familiar with. My thought was, if I can get people who have never been to see a theatrical show — or haven’t in years — I could trick them into seeing something they know. Hook ’em! Then pull an Uncle Vanya on them.”

After Reservoir Dogs, COTU actually did produce Uncle Vanya at Story Slam in 2010. That was four months before reviving Trainspotting at the same Central Avenue venue.

Berry Newkirk in COTU's Trainspotting. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

  • Berry Newkirk in COTU’s Trainspotting. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

“Trainspotting at Story Slam is perhaps the closest that I came to the vision I had in my head to make it to the stage,” Cartee reminisces. “Lion in Winter was a fantastic show and for me personally, I believe that is my best work. As far as overall idea? Big Lebowski, Princess Bride, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I play up the comedy ’cause I’m a hack, but even then, what I was hearing from a lot of our audiences was that what was on the page leaped out into life and grabbed you by the balls. Much more so than any song and dance or even on the screen.”

A sharp edge is often evident in Cartee’s hacking, for there’s another rich vein that runs COTU’s history, whether it’s favorite movies plopped onstage or classic literature. With titles that include Titus, Reservoir Dogs, Beowulf, and The Disturbance in Whitechapel — chronicling the rampage of Jack the Ripper — COTU’s catalogue is easily the bloodiest in the annals of Charlotte theatre. The one time that he detoured into a musical, Cartee’s COTU presented The Rocky Horror Show.

But musicals are not his thing. “All I know is that I don’t want Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs to do a whole musical number about cutting off a fucking ear. Fuck that. Cut the ear off and let the blood drip.”

Megan York and Colby Davis in COTU’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

  • Megan York and Colby Davis in COTU’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. (Photo courtesy of COTU)

There’s plenty more gore to come. The newest installment of Disturbance, Fear the Ripper, will transplant Jack’s final rampage to Plaza-Midwood — with five new endings — and at the Halloween end of October, Silence will reign. That one comes with the chained convict Hannibal Lecter.

Is there anything left undone? Probably not, since the man who labels himself the Intergalactic Peacekeeper of COTU is letting his imagination fly into outer space in two of his valedictories. After Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis, Cartee and COTU will present The Rapture Sampler Platter, a variety of new, short plays based on the word and theme rapture, Sept. 8-10.

The theatre troupe will revisit its final frontier in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, December 1-10. And it should be a blast.

Final Fireworks in the COTU Universe: Cartee discloses details on upcoming COTU shows

The Rapture Sampler Platter, Sept. 8-10 @ Pure Pizza Variety of new, short plays based on the word and/theme Rapture. “I choose to do another Sampler Platter ‘cause I feel that new work is always a must. We need to be churning out work like crazy to exercise our minds… and I choose to do it on a short timeline so that we can maximize actor talent pools. I want to give anyone who has never directed a chance to see what that’s like. So this project is all about bringing new minds together with new work, giving them a deadline and seeing what pops out.”

Disturbance In Whitechapel: Fear the Ripper, Sept. 28-Oct. 3 @ Plaza-Midwood In a city with what seems to have a convention of killers, who is the real Ripper? Why has he returned? And can Abberline finally put an end to this menace? This time we invade the streets of Plaza-Midwood to seek out the fiend. “Disturbance is always a blast. Last year I added a separate storyline which split the audience up at times. Of course five new endings. There was no way I was going to leave without carrying out another slaughter.”

Silence, Oct. 27-30, Nov. 4-6 @ The Roxbury Clarice has her job cut out for her – and maybe literally. She has to match wits with the notorious Hannibal Lecter while she seeks to prevent another murderer from striking again. “Which brings me to the Halloween show. What better than a thriller with a cannibal? Blood…. lots of blood.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dec. 1-4, 7-10 @ Unknown Brewery Possibly the last surviving human, Arthur Dent, is rescued by Ford Prefect by hitchhiking onto a passing spacecraft. Then they set of on a series of misadventures wi th Trillian, a depressed android and the President of the Galaxy. some think this was general a good idea on their part. “The biggest show I could think of that’s been on my plate is Hitchhiker’s Guide. Love those books, TV show, radio show… and I wanted to see a live show. I mean when they did this in Liverpool, it had a hovercraft! I won’t be doing that… but I will be bringing the universe to you.”

The Roads Both Taken

Theater review: If/Then

By Perry Tannenbaum

Unless you’ve been stubbornly clinging to some medieval idea of predestination, you’ve probably realized that the unfolding of your life, like human history, is simply one actuality plucked from an infinite number of possibilities. There are so many profound, iffy, or split-second decisions along the way that could have led you to different outcomes, so many instances of split-second timing that could have put you in different places – or in different company.

If/Then (Jackie Burns)

  • If/Then (Jackie Burns)

Brian Yorkey’s book for If/Then, with music by Tom Kitt, isn’t the first script to show us what happens if a single stitch in history is dropped. It’s a Wonderful Life demonstrated the difference a single person can make in the lives surrounding him and in a town’s destiny. Back to the Future was a sci-fi study of a how the slightest tweak of the past can resonate – and radiate – for generations to come.
Yorkey gives us an evening-long double exposure for just a few years in the life of Elizabeth. A talented woman with city planning creds, Elizabeth bumps into two old chums in Madison Square Park when she returns to New York after divorcing her husband in Phoenix. Lucas is a bisexual old flame who is hyper-seriously immersed in activism, while Kate is a gregarious lesbian who’s an ace kindergarten teacher.

Hinging on whether she picks up a cell phone call or not, Elizabeth either leaves the park with the intention of meeting Lucas or Kate that night. Meeting Lucas, she becomes Beth, the powerful city planner. Or she’ll rendezvous with Kate – on a course to become Liz, meet a future husband, drift into teaching and motherhood, and wear glasses to make herself look smarter.

Scenes in Beth’s life and Liz’s life dissolve into one another as the glasses come on and off, lightly pointing out the joys and sacrifices of both career and family. At times, scenes merge – at Elizabeth’s birthday party or in her bedroom. Sound confusing? It is.

After seeing Idina Menzel star as Elizabeth on Broadway, I found it much easier to track Liz and Beth’s separate lives in the touring version now at Belk Theater. Yet after concentrating so hard on sorting out the Beth path from the Liz path, I still had to confront Yorkey’s confusing loop back to Madison Square Park at the end of the night – and the numinous haze that Elizabeth’s best friends had been turned into.

For the paths Elizabeth takes affect the destinies of both Lucas and Kate. In one scenario, Liz’s future husband introduces Lucas to his future husband, and in the other scenario, Beth is there to prevent Kate from divorcing her wife. In the welter of Kitt’s power ballads, the ones Liz sings so much like Beth’s, the background and the whole point begin to get blurry.

On Broadway, Menzel appeared to be a self-absorbed superstar condescending to play two mere mortals most of the night. I actually like Jackie Burns better on the tour. Yes, Burns turns every one of her ballads into an American Idol extravaganza as Menzel did, adoring her own voice to the point of frequently obliterating Yorkey’s lyrics, but she invests herself more in Liz and Beth between ballads, and we can feel more for her when her hearts are broken. True, her climactic “Always Starting Over” isn’t the three-act opera Menzel made of it, but her “What the Fuck?” just might be a little more comical – because Burns is more inclined toward vulnerability.

As Lucas, Anthony Rapp gets to be tender in the Beth scenario, singing “You Don’t Need to Love Me.” Opposite Liz, Lucas is more appealing and domestic, responding to the more romantically inclined David (Marc Delacruz) in the “Best Worst Mistake” duet. But apart from his opposition and cynicism when Beth accepts a high-powered government job, Lucas doesn’t really figure in the important dialectic.

That’s where Kate and Josh come in. When Liz runs into her future husband for a second time in a subway car, it’s Kate who tells her that the universe is trying to send her a message in “It’s a Sign” – and that Josh is the messenger. Combatting Liz’s rationality, Tamyra Gray has the kooky energy you’d expect from a prize-winning schoolteacher who proudly consults her horoscope and believes in fate.

Seen first in military camo after a tour of duty overseas, David either does or doesn’t encounter Elizabeth at the right split second in the park, but it turns out that he combines brawn and brains when he does, for he’s a surgeon. His arguments against Liz’s rationalism and her actuarial calculations of probability are more eloquent in “You Never Know” and more existential in the “Here I Go” duet.

Matthew Hydzik keenly understands the connection between those songs as Josh, and he brings out what is compelling about their arguments better than his Broadway counterpart. Statistics aside, we don’t really know what’s going to happen in the future, and any tough but important decision we make in life will always be an intrepid plunge into the unknown. Even when things don’t work exactly as we hoped and planned – which is what the odds truly favor – it’s questionable that we’d want a do-over. For what we experience becomes who we are.

That’s pretty much what Liz is telling us in “Always Starting Over.”

Now do Elizabeth’s forking paths offer us a fresh insight – or are they an effective way to underscore the preciousness and suspense of every moment that we live? I’m only slightly more convinced the second time around. People that I overheard leaving Belk Theater on opening night were more preoccupied with figuring out what had happened than what it meant.

Can’t Get Enough of Your Nun, Babe

Reviews of Sister Act and Killing Women

By Perry Tannenbaum

Maybe Ophelia should have followed Hamlet’s advice. Julie Andrews — or was that Carrie Underwood? — checked into a nunnery in The Sound of Music and, in spite of some serious compatibility issues, wound up with a husband and a singing group. The same thing happened to Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act when she hid from a Las Vegas gangster at a San Francisco convent and wound up leading a choir of nuns in a command performance for the Pope.

Sister Act runs through July 23 at CPCC’s Halton Theater. (Photo by Chris Record)

(Photo by Chris Record)

The musical version, transplanted to Philly and currently completing a very successful summer season at CPCC, makes it a little clearer that lounge singer Deloris Van Cartier gets her man. Some might say that Sweaty Eddie, the shy and timid police desk sergeant who whisks Deloris into hiding, mans up at just the right moment and gets his woman. No matter, there’s plenty of righteous jubilation at the end.

Relationships with Deloris tend to be turbulent. She disdains the timid Eddie even though she knows he has a crush on her. Yet she submits to the indignity of being gangster Curtis Jackson’s piece-on-the-side, because he might soften up and get her a record deal. That relationship sours when Curtis gives Deloris one of his wife’s hand-me-down coats for Christmas — a rather noxious blue number — but before we can see whether she’ll follow through on her resolve to walk out on him, she witnesses Curtis killing off one of his henchmen.

So that relationship is also on the rocks.

It’s only when Eddie puts her in the witness protection program at Queen of Angels Cathedral that we arrive at the relationship that gives Sister Act its true spark. Eddie and Curtis merely represent the diverging paths Deloris might take in life. Mother Superior is her polar opposite, disciplined, dignified, god-fearing, ascetic, and tradition-bound. Comical shockwaves fly in both directions when they meet — as soon as Mother Superior espies Deloris’s glittery scanty attire, and as soon as Deloris whips out a cig.

What elevates this script, adapted by Cheri and Bill Steinkellner from Joseph Howard’s screenplay, is the attention it gives to the Mother Superior’s spiritual crisis as Deloris’s leadership of the choir brings crass commercial success to the struggling Cathedral. The stinging line she nails Deloris with, “God sent you here for a purpose — take the hint,” gets flung right back in Mother Superior’s face.

CP and director Corey Mitchell are so fortunate to have Paula Baldwin for their top nun. While Baldwin gets great comedy mileage out of Mother Superior’s discomfiture, she also delves deeply enough into the Mother’s spiritual anguish for us to empathize, even if we can’t climb aboard. It would be an overstatement to say that Baldwin can’t sing a note, but there are some notes Mitchell and music director Drina Keen should have advised her not to sing. Speaking some of “I Haven’t Got a Prayer” would have helped, but it remains one of the evening’s highlights.

Conversely, singing rather than acting is Jessica Rebecca’s strong suit as Deloris. She’s a fair substitute for the infallible Whoopi in the comical moments, but she’s an absolute force of nature when she breaks into song. I’m not sure that Rebecca even needs a mic when she’s belting at Halton Theater, but she was certainly overmiked for most of opening night.

I only began to feel raw emotion from Rebecca at Eddie’s apartment when she sang “Fabulous, Baby!” her second pass at proclaiming her aspirations. So it was especially devastating when she suddenly grew soft segueing into the title song, where she realizes the love, sisterhood, responsibility, and growth she has experienced at Queen of Angels. A goose-bump moment, for sure.

Rebecca towers over Christian Deon Williams, making it all the easier for him to simulate Eddie’s timidity, but the richness in his lower range as he sings his aspirational “I Could Be That Guy” tips us off to his manliness too soon. Big as he is, Stephen Stamps could stand to be raunchier — and older — as Curtis to get the full comical menace out of “When I Find My Baby,” a doo-wop love song with murderous intent, but his Barry White shtick later on is workin’, Babe.

Curtis’s backup thugs have a nice ethnic diversity, Justin Miller as Joey, Alex Aguilar as Pablo, and Justin Rivers as TJ, all of them getting prime spots in “Lady in a Long Black Dress.” More individuality is lavished upon Monsignor O’Hara and three of the nuns. It’s Beau Stroupe as O’Hara who prevails upon Mother Superior to offer refuge to Deloris and is then surprised — and surprisingly enthused — about the rock and gospel Deloris infuses into Sunday services.

Megan Postle is preternaturally welcoming and upbeat as Sister Mary Patrick, exactly the quality needed to maximize the comedy of “It’s Good to Be a Nun.” Caroline Chisholm is the conflicted postulant, Mary Robert, instantly drawn to Deloris’s worldliness. She has some prodigious high notes lurking within her, but Chisholm maintains her innocence even after Deloris helps set them free. As the usurped choir director, Sister Mary Lazarus, Kathryn Stamas is the most surprising of the nuns. Not only can she kick aside a piano stool with a flair that would make Jerry Lee Lewis proud, she can kick her left foot as high as her ear, kicking sideways.

Unless you truly expected the Halton’s stage to be transformed into a cathedral worthy of a Pope’s visit, you’ll be impressed by Jennifer O’Kelly’s set designs — and by how slickly one scene melts into another. Except for the glittery getups worn by Deloris and her backup duo, costume designer Theresa Bush reins it in, but the papal finale is pretty fab.

Alan Menken’s “Here Within These Walls” echoes his own “Beauty and the Beast,” a letdown where there should be uplift. But his “Sunday Morning Fever” — and a couple of his other songs here — will waken disco memories of Travolta, the Bee Gees, and their Saturday Night Fever, a trashy touch that somehow adds to the fun.

A shot from Killing Women. (Photo courtesy of Stephen Seay)

(Photo courtesy of Stephen Seay)

A similar vein of humor runs through Killing Women, a black comedy presented by Stephen Seay Productions at UpStage. Gwen is involuntarily recruited into a ring of hired killers, a profession totally inimical to motherhood. Forget about spiritual uplift as two other pistol packers, vulgar Abby and elegant Lucy, pitch in with the childcare.

Gwen earns one of the most hilarious character descriptions I’ve ever heard, rightly labeled a “do-it-yourself widow” by Abby. The action really revolves around Abby, for after Lucy splatters her hitman husband’s brains on their living room wall, Abby’s callous boss, Ramone, decrees that she must knock the mother off. What passes for Abby’s heart shines through here, for she sells Ramone on the notion of grooming Lucy to replace her dead husband at the firm — but only gets one week to deliver.

Turns out that Gwen has considerable aptitude: she’s a crack shot and more than one hitman is smitten by her, though her body disposal skills need work. Luci Wilson carries the show as Gwen, no less rough-around-the-edges now than when I first saw her in 2008 with the Robot Johnson sketch comedy group. That’s a good thing, and when we finally see all her tattoos, we’re not even slightly surprised.

A less confident, more wired performer, Elizabeth Simpson seems to know Gwen from the inside, and Seay casts two blue-chippers, Lesley Ann Giles and Christopher Jones, to fill out his front-liners as Lucy and Ramone. Cameos are quirky as everything else in Marisa Wegrzyn’s script, Matthew Schantz and Field Cantey handling them quite well.

DCP’s Energetic “Fox in the Fairway” Is Nearly as Funny as a Sitcom

13669254_10157260428765193_8004760314236675510_o

By Perry Tannenbaum

Foxhunting and golf are both centuries old, so as a fancier of farces with keen sporting interests, I was intrigued when Ken Ludwig’s The Fox on the Fairway arrived in North Carolina during the summer of 2012. Ludwig is probably the most reliable farceur our nation has produced in the past 50 years, his Moon Over Buffalo arguably an even finer example than his more renowned Lend Me a Tenor. But after its NC premiere at Flat Rock Playhouse, followed shortly afterwards with another production at Old Courthouse Theatre in Concord, the presumably inevitable Charlotte premiere still hasn’t happened. So, in spite of my recent disappointment with Davidson Community Players‘ Singin’ in the Rain, I yielded to the prospect of finally tracking down The Fox at Duke Family Performance Hall, the same place where DCP had remounted their Gene Kelly musical without either a rain shower or a sturdy lamppost.

Assuming that it wasn’t going to be subjected to undue stress, I was greatly encouraged when I first saw Clay James’ sturdy set design for the clubhouse at the Quail Valley Country Club, where all the action takes place. My optimism was immediately punctured when the fun was intended to begin. Each of the six characters we were about to see made a quick entrance, delivered a one-liner, and scooted back to the wings. Even if it were executed well, that’s a pretty cheesy way to open a show. While director Paige Johnston Thomas had apparently communicated the needs for energy and speed to her cast, the lesson of strength was either omitted or lost. I couldn’t really hear most of the words these players were blurting out, and the problem didn’t entirely disappear as the plot unfolded, though I detected improvement after intermission.

Justin is the newly hired assistant at Quail Valley, eager to please his new boss, Bingham, and even more eager to become engaged to Louise, who already works there. We soon find that Bingham has even more pressing concerns. He has been consistently losing to his condescending and underhanded rival, Dickie, in the annual tournament between his club and the Crouching Squirrel, Dickie’s club. Dickie gives Bingham 2-to-1 odds on the outcome, betting $200,000 against Bingham’s $100,000, but Bingham must also surrender his wife’s antique shop if Quail Valley loses. Before agreeing to this wager – which seems less lopsided the more you think about it – Dickie has already stolen Quail Valley’s best golfer away to the Crouching Squirrel team. And it seems that Dickie has also stolen the affections of Bingham’s nagging wife, Muriel. If that weren’t enough, Bingham’s future as president of Quail Valley hinges on the outcome of the tournament.

As it turns out, Bingham’s situation isn’t altogether hopeless. When Justin told him that he shot a 136 the last time he was out on a golf course, he neglected to mention that he had played two rounds. Then there’s his VP, Pamela, who knows her way around the technicalities of club rules well enough to quickly enroll Justin as a member, qualified to compete in the tournament. She also amply reciprocates the affection that Bingham was too shy to act upon back in the days when he was a pimply kid. Quail Valley thus has a representative who can conquer on the course if Justin can maintain his delicate equipoise. An eight-stroke lead could vanish in a heartbeat if some bad news rattles him. Now we know that is sure to happen, right? The reason, in this instance, is Louise’s inability to withhold the truth from her fiancé, even if the upshot is horrendous.

indexConsistency and logic prove wobbly throughout the evening. Bingham undergoes rigorous questioning when he adds Justin to his team without the customary waiting period, yet Dickie earns a free pass on taking away Quail Valley’s best golfer overnight. The whole idea of the clubs having competing teams is discarded in the blink of an eye – it’s Justin versus the traitorous Tramplemain, one-on-one. Dickie takes pains to wager on Muriel’s shop when he already has Muriel, and Louise manages to call off the engagement because Justin is justly mistrustful of her. About the only artful part of Ludwig’s plotting comes at the end, after he has detonated all his ludicrous catastrophes. Only then do we get the first inkling of what foxes have to do with anything that we’ve seen.

In this mating of unlikely disabilities, Tim Hager as the ultra-neurotic Justin was by far the more satisfying performer. With the onset of the bad news, Hager turned the club’s sofa into a hilarious prop as he unraveled all over it. Rachel Bammel was more than sufficiently juvenile as Louise, but her superabundant energy undid her whenever she spoke frantically. Hager wasn’t always entirely intelligible either, particularly in the climactic argument before intermission. Brian Rassler as Bingham and Abigail Pagán as Pamela had the right kind of hesitantly magnetic chemistry between them. I can readily forgive Pagán for being slightly younger than ideal for Pamela because she gave us a portrayal that was as vivid as Hager’s, and she was the one person on stage who consistently cared about reaching up to the mezzanine with her voice. By contrast, Rassler was always agreeably confused throughout Bingham’s many trials, his constant stress filled in the blanks when I missed the actual words.

Stuart and Leslie Jonap, as Dickie and Muriel, were equally gifted in portraying the villains, bestowing one dimension apiece to the swindling club prez and the nagging wife. Both Jonaps could also stretch to two dimensions – and turn up the heat – when the nasties invaded each other’s space. They were perfect examples of why blithe farces and community theatre companies are such a perfect fit. If only Ludwig had provided a better script, they might have been able to shine. Instead, they could only enhance the feeling that, six years after Ludwig’s play was originally staged in Washington, DC, we’re still watching a chaotic first draft of a farce. Everyone was trying so hard, but despite the heroics of Hager and Pagán, this brew never rose to the level of a TV sitcom – though I’m sure it’s as good as many that have perished as a pilot. As for the cheesy shtick that goes with the curtain calls, don’t blame Thomas. The director is only staging what’s on the page, where silliness occasionally devolves into stupidity.