Creation of the World and Other Business

2004 (No pictures available)

 

3/24: A 24 Hour Theatre Project

2005 (No pictures available)

Trainspotting
2008
 

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http://www.artsalamode.com/AALM_TheatreReviews.html
TRAINSPOTTING
Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh
Adapted for the stage by Harry Gibson
Directed by James Cartee
A Citizens of the Universe Production
The Milestone Club, January 23-25, 2008

Kudos to producer/director James Cartee. Not since Artzilla has Charlotte seen such an original, subversive production. And yes, it's that Trainspotting. You may have seen the 1996 film which has become a cult favorite. Also adapted from the book, the film is a gritty black comedy about a group of young, socially disaffected heroin users in Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1980s. It doesn't get much blacker (comedically) and grittier than the stage production at the Milestone Club. It is definitely not for those with delicate sensibilities. Age should have nothing to do with it, though. A person can be old at 20, and young at 80, so don't let that stop you from attending the closing performance tonight.
There is a reason, if not a message to all three incarnations of this story. We are mostly guided on our "tour" of the mean streets by Mark Renton (John Wray) who looks around him and is not impressed with what he sees. You'll probably recognize much of the dialogue, "Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a ******* big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers…" Then, the crux of the play, "I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reason? There are no reasons – who needs reasons when you have heroin?" As mentioned, this is not a message play. The audience simply goes along for the ride. There isn't a plot per se either, but a series of escalating scenes that shows the brutality of addiction. Renton is intelligent, he tells us he is a dropout university student, but alienated and staring at the "truth" as he sees it in the beginning; you are born, suffer and die, without much fanfare or making a difference. Yet, if you become addicted, all your fears, anxieties, and problems just become one big problem - scoring heroin.
Also along for the journey are the multiple characters portrayed with zeal by the ensemble cast, all giving every ounce of energy to the multiple scene changes, costumes, and Scottish accents they use. John Wray is outstanding as Renton, the sarcastic, alienated, anti-hero. He maintains the accent throughout, but is understandable. If his performance doesn't work, the play doesn't work, but he does an excellent job of making Renton just human enough that there is empathy in the face of his depraved behavior. That's not easy. Joel Sumner is a standout in his roles, especially as the initially sweet, naive Tommy. Jenny Wright is one of those actors who bring energy onstage whenever she's in a scene, and is interesting to watch. She has one of the grossest scenes in the play, but somehow makes it work. Diego V. Francica is the most intense actor in the production and suitably scary as Berghie, although at times I couldn't understand his thick accent. The other actors: Stephen West-Rogers, Kaddie Sharpe, and Teresa Abernathy also add nicely to the mix.
The "comedy" alternates with the torturous, shocking scenes of Renton trying to kick his habit when he's physically sick and bodily functions are out of his control, or he callously uses other people. Because Renton doesn't preach to the audience, merely reporting on his debased life as an addict, the audience can witness everything without being forced to make a decision of right or wrong. It simply is the way it is. Renton's explanation about why he choose heroin? "Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still not near it." Then you see the result of that choice.
The Milestone Club provides good atmosphere for this particular play. The program is a bonus and unlike any I've ever seen with CD's of songs donated by various local and regional bands. The technical folks deserve special consideration that so much was achieved with so little, but wear warm clothes. The near capacity audience sat in their coats throughout the play, although it didn't dampen their enthusiasm. Trainspotting is quite an accomplishment.

Review by Ann Marie Oliva

Night of the Living Dead

2008 (PICTURES FORTHCOMING)

 

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CAST AVG. While technically not a COTU venture, we helped this production by doing a Zombiewalk before the show.

Perry Tannenbaum
Published 10.28.2008

While AvantVanGuard doesn't officially launch until this Thursday, with a latenight aftershow at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre following the new production of Monster -- The Real Story of Frankenstein, we caught a foretaste after the Pointers late last Friday. If Night of the Living Dead can serve as a predictor, Cirque de Morte will be gory, campy, gloomy, hysterical and heavy on the makeup. James Walker and Nick Iammatteo were the chief earthlings fending off the alien zombies engulfing the world, with James Cartee directing the mayhem between splices of the classic film.

We will carefully watch this new CAST offshoot and report on all bizarre mutations that show up over the Halloween weekend on Clement Avenue

 

GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis

2009

 

Fight Club

2009

 

THEM'S FIGHTING WORDS: Stephen West-Rogers, Kaddie Sharpe, Diego Francica (front, left-right), Bret Kimbrough, John Michael Coutsos, Kenny Kline and Chris Freeman (back, l-r) put up their dukes in Fight Club.

Fight Club: Fistfuls of testosterone
Published 07.07.09
By Perry Tannenbaum

Sixth rule of Fight Club isn't in the script. It was decreed on opening night of the current Citizens of the Universe production, tucked behind a corrugated row of cheapjack office suites off Central Avenue, in a grungy parking lot flanked by a loading dock and some railroad tracks. The sixth rule was spontaneously proclaimed last Thursday midway through Act 2, when the rains had already wrecked the lights and the sound system.
COTU founder and director James Cartee had replaced the kliegs and the spots at intermission with the headlamps of a car and an SUV. The show went on, and the rain resumed. Cartee emerged from his car and strode onto the makeshift stage in the middle of a scene where the schizo narrator, Jack, was about to experience a birthday celebration involving two cakes shaped like a woman's boobs.
The candles were not to be lit in their central locations. Instead, Cartee proclaimed the sixth rule:
"Gotta call it when the scenery starts blowing away."
Reasonable enough. Sue and I left under the cover of our umbrellas and, since we had the CP day-night doubleheader booked for Friday, returned for the July 4th edition of Fight Club. With pedestrians lined up on the sidewalks awaiting the fireworks at Memorial Stadium, it was a little more difficult to find the 1311 Central Ave. location -- and to avoid mowing down mothers and children as we entered the parking lot.
Stoppages were more benign at this performance. We timed our arrival to coincide with intermission, so we had missed the stoppage during Act 1 when a train had rumbled through. But we sure didn't miss the climax of the fireworks at Memorial, a cluster of cannonades so loud that Diego Francica, playing Jack, called the second timeout.
As aficionados of the Chuck Palahniuk novel and Brad Pitt movie are well aware, I've already broken Fight Club rules 1 and 2: "Don't talk about Fight Club!" Even a devout rule-breaker like me has trouble talking too much about COTU's asphalt jungle version with sound dropouts, decimated sub-guerilla production values, and a 47-1/2 hour intermission compounding the inherent difficulties of Dylan Yates's stage adaptation. Additional hurdles presented there include Palahniuk's circular plot; detours from the known frontiers of chemistry, sociology and psychology; and frequent zigzags backward and forward in time, with the occasional probability bypass.
Yet the whole testosterone spectacle rouses me to persist. So I'm talking. Jack holds down an actuarial job at a Big Three automaker. Tyler Durden, a maniac screen projectionist, coaxes Jack to live with him and launch his network of nationwide Fight Clubs. Marla is the woman who loves them.
We get hints at the beginning of Act 2 that Tyler actually dynamited Jack's condo before offering him shelter, but there are greater shocks and surprises to detain us as the story unfolds. Fight Club evolves into a cadre of human automatons who are a ghoulish mix of masochism and anarchist terrorism.
Comedy episodes seem to gravitate to Kaddie Sharpe, the only female in the ensemble. Early in Act 1, she's a surreal stewardess on a down-market airline whose pre-flight spiel includes a proscription against fucking in the restrooms. (Reminds me: COTU's Porta-Potty is on back-order.) Then she settles into her main role as Marla.
Act 2 hilarity peaks when Marla arrives at Tyler's pad with freezer baggies filled with her mommy's liposuctioned fat. Why is Marla saving this gelatinous gook, and why is Jack insisting so vehemently that she shouldn't open the fridge? Here I won't talk, except to hint that it all connects with Tyler's diabolical scheme to fund his underworld network and blow up more things -- resulting in Francica's finest moments as Jack in some gross-out physical comedy you won't soon forget.
Fight choreography and tech are executed with the same precision as the buffoonery. Stephen West-Rogers brings a martial arts fervor and simplicity to Tyler that stamps a seal of authenticity on the larger Fight Club scenes. He's as effective getting hit as doling out the punishment.
Four Space Monkeys fill out the cast, with Kenny Kline standing out in multiple roles as Angelface, the Fight Club newbie; Gloria, the support group bimbo; and the union boss who kicks the crap out of Tyler. The others -- Bret Kimbrough, Chris Freeman, and John Michael Coutsos -- are all suitably silly, clueless or fascist as needed.
Can the cast hold it perfectly together amid all the distractions, deluges, mishaps, and interruptions? Not always. After the fireworks subsided, Francica lost his lines briefly on Saturday night, and later on, Rogers made an awkwardly delayed entrance, probably because it was impossible for him to hear his unamplified cue line.
Stuff like that makes Fight Club even more fun to talk about. Even if it is against the rules.

FIGHT CLUB
By Dylan Yates
Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Directed by James Cartee
Citizens of the Universe
A parking lot behind 1311 Central Avenue
July 2-11, 2009
OK, space monkeys. What's the first rule of Fight Club? Don't talk about Fight Club. So I can't say as much as I want to. But this show proves that theatre can take place just about anywhere. In a parking lot between corrugated metal buildings, next to a train track and trees, beside a dumpster, Citizens of the Universe is meeting with courageous theatergoers to explore our postmodern appetite for violence and madness.
The opening night's rain ruined COTU's lighting and sound equipment. But the company adapted, creating a more primal, urban experience with car headlights and speakers in an open hatchback. Noise from nearby building fans, a helicopter circling overhead, and even a train passing by—all add to the gritty environment, even if actors' voices are hard to hear at times.
The set consists of shredded pieces of hung plastic, an unpainted platform on the side, a fridge, and a table on the other side, plus a few folding chairs. And the actors sometimes seem to be reading lines from the novel, rather than playing characters. Yet this fits the novel's spirit of consumer critique, sardonic wit, angry energy, and ironic mimicry.
Actual fight clubs emerged around the US, with men fighting bare-fisted and bare-chested, in imitation of the machismo shown by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in the 1999 film version of Palahniuk's book. Perhaps some homegrown terrorists have also been spawned by the goofy, violent pranks of Pitt's Marxist trickster, Tyler Durden, and his Project Mayhem. But the book works on the reader in a very different way from the film, drawing one inside the mind of the troubled narrator, Jack. Through him, the novel evokes personal identifications with the charming Tyler, rebellious Marla, and other weird characters, twisting it all, through shockingly comical actions, into a self-critical knot.
This Fight Club stands somewhere between the novel and film. With excellent fight choreography—and the immediacy of actors' bodies hitting the same concrete where spectators sit on portable chairs a few feet away—the thrilling brutality of WWF or Extreme Fighting begins to peal away and the wastefulness of young male egos appears. The play's airplane scene (and program cartoon) also reveals the deeper terrors of mortal vulnerability and wasted time, behind the veneer of safe travel and routine work, yet here with a comical roughness. Likewise, the support group meetings, the soap making out of maternal fat, the double-breasted birthday cake, and the split-self suicide become visceral in this show, as well as literally insightful and movingly action-packed.
It's a difficult play to watch, though. Even the wicked charm of Stephen West-Rogers as Tyler, the burning confusion of Diego Francica as Jack, and the playful transformations of other actors into various characters barely makes this show pleasurable. For they each acquire monstrous attributes that reflect the madness in us (and the patriarchal crisis in our society) like an intricate, shattered mirror.
So go if you dare. But don't tell 'em I told you about it.

Review by Mark Pizzato
Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain and Theatres of Human Sacrifice. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.

 

A Universe of fists and words
Young, avant-garde Charlotte theater company brings ‘Fight Club' to the paved outdoors.
By Lawrence Toppman
Theater Critic
Posted: Friday, Jun. 26, 2009
fight club

The cast of "Fight Club" reviews the rules of the organization under which they do battle.
More Information

'Fight Club'

Book/film about a timid conformist liberated by a dangerous anarchist, staged by Citizens of the Universe.

When: 8:30 p.m. July 2-4 and 9-11. There will be pre-show drinks and music at Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St., starting at 6:30, and a post-show meet-the-cast at Thirsty Beaver, 1225 Central Ave.
Where: Behind Quick Pawn Shop at 1305 Central Ave.
Admission: $10.
Details: cotu23@yahoo.com, 704-449-9742704-449-9742 or 704-953-2874704-953-2874.

First rule of Fight Club: You DO NOT TALK about Fight Club!
Oh, well – blew that one. Might as well tell everything, now.
This “Fight Club” is Dylan Yates' theatrical adaptation, blending elements of the novel by Chuck Palahniuk and the movie script by Jim Uhls. It offers more simulated butt-kicking and actual wise-cracking than any other local drama this year. And it takes place in a parking lot behind a pawnshop. Not the play – the production, which starts Thursday at dusk. It comes to you courtesy of Citizens of the Universe, whose first local outing – a similar take on “Trainspotting” – rocked the Milestone in 2008. COTU then staged “Night of the Living Dead” around Halloween at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre. On one level, the universe these citizens inhabit is familiar: Hip, impoverished thespians push the theatrical envelope until it all but shreds. On a deeper level, like “Fight Club” hero Tyler Durden himself, they're banging their heads – metaphorically, if the fight choreographer did his job – to prove they matter in a community more accustomed to conventional things. COTU is no democracy. Co-founder and “Fight Club” director James Cartee clearly ran the rehearsal where Tyler (Stephen West-Rogers) and The Narrator (Diego Francica) mock-pummeled each other in a cluttered artist's studio off Central Avenue.
Yet COTU is a place to take risks, to unveil a side of yourself even you didn't foresee. “This company uses any talent you want to bring to it,” says Francica, who played the short-fused Begbie in “Trainspotting” and also helped design the posters for that show.“He'll cast actors who don't know whether they have (the role) in them, because he sees something in you. And he'll give you lots of free rein.” Adds West-Rogers, who met Cartee when they labored together at a lighting company, “My entire wardrobe in this show is my own. I've made suggestions about sound. One actor custom-builds furniture and helped out with elements of the set. “It's not hierarchical here – and we all appreciate each other much more that way.”Flexibility has been the key since COTU began, just before 9-11in Greenville, S.C. Cartee, who had graduated from Winthrop University in 1998, hooked up with like-minded theater folks to produce an eclectic array of shows, including an “Equus” where the audience sat in a stable, surrounded by horses.
Cartee has held a range of jobs, moving to Charlotte briefly in 2003, going west, coming back in 2006. He meets bills now by working with IATSE, the union of professional stagehands, movie technicians and allied crafts. And there are bills, not least when COTU is rolling. “I pay for all this,” he says. “You have to save up to do a show, and you rely on the actors' abilities to find props or costumes. The theater community has stepped up for us: We've gotten wood from Theatre Charlotte, help from the costume designer at Children's Theatre, support from CPCC and Actor's Theatre.”
Cartee hasn't made things easy with “Fight Club.” He'll need body microphones and an outdoor lighting grid; the cast will compete with summer heat, mosquitoes and audible interruptions from a train that passes a block away. Is this all worth the pain? He nods. “I'm a child of the '90s, with a feeling of, ‘Screw capitalistic stuff, stand up and believe in yourself,'” he says. But ask about artistic philosophy, and he shies away: “I did ‘Trainspotting' with no intention of ‘art.' I'm planning a ‘Reservoir Dogs,' and I felt I should do a show where I fought my initial reaction to something I didn't like, which is ‘Uncle Vanya.' So this company isn't really a company. It's a series of ideas."

 

Reservoir Dogs

2010

 

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The gunplay's the thing in Reservoir Dogs
By Perry Tannenbaum

You wouldn't want to see a stage production of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs that left out the gunplay from the movie. So before you walk in to the current Citizens of the Universe production, you'll find a jarful of complimentary earplugs to bring in with you. As COTU's lead guerilla, director James Cartee, tells us, we don't need the protection until Act 2, but when the blood begins flowing in Act 1, it's reassuring to have that protection in your pocket as you anticipate the fireworks to come.

Like last summer's Fight Club, simply attending a COTU operation is an exotic adventure. Earliest arrivals can park in front of Studio 1212, tucked away on that portion of 10th Street that connects Central Avenue and the Innerbelt. Otherwise, a helpful dude with a flashlight guides you to parking spots across the street. Then you must circle around the long warehouse, down a gravelly alley and past an art car that looks like a Nazi nightmare.

Portions of Reservoir Dogs are even more frightful than the car, particularly in Act 2, where gunfire and torture run amok. With some misgivings, Sue and I held our ground in the front row after intermission, emerging unspattered. A sprinkling of cinematic touches, impishly projected on the rear wall by Cartee, provide welcome relief. At any rate, Sue's implantable defibrillator didn't go off.

The bungling multi-colored Reservoir Gang -- including Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Brown, Ms. Blue, a tetchy Mr. Pink, and a profusely bleeding Mr. Orange -- are led by kingpin Joe Cabot, infused with raspy-voiced fire by David Holland. Management support comes from Joe's son, "Nice Guy" Eddie, given an effective layer of privileged superciliousness by Colby Davis.

Joe's slickly planned jewelry heist has gone spectacularly wrong, largely because, as Pink -- the thinker in the group -- has rightly surmised, there's a rat in the gang who has set them up. Even the setup flames out, when somebody sounds the alarm, and we learn that Mr. Blonde has gone berserk. In the ensuing shoot-out, a couple of colors die out of the Reservoir crayon box amid the general carnage. At least one cop has been killed, and another has been kidnapped by Blonde.

Tom Ollis lavishes a gleeful brutality upon Mr. Blonde, reaching an apex of sadism when he begins torturing his kidnap victim – not to find out who the rat is but just for the sheer joy of it. After a brief stint as the Waitress in the opening scene, Brittany Patterson completes her memorable Charlotte debut in frantic, blood-curdling style as Blonde’s victim.

That torture scene sets in motion all the falling dominoes that follow. In the end, as the borderline between good and evil begins to blur, this becomes a story of Mr. White's (Larry) paternal loyalty toward his fallen comrade, Mr. Orange (Freddie). Scott Reynolds ably projects the twisted, combative heroism of White as he becomes more and more invested in Orange's survival. For most of the production's 108-minute length, Orange is in excruciating pain, but Berry Newkirk lives credibly in this narrow, desperate range, his sufferings occasionally the wellspring of cruel, black humor.

Keep your eye on the sly opportunistic Mr. Pink, rendered by Chris Freeman with a nervous watchfulness that belies his coolheadedness under fire. Fight choreography by Kara Wooten, as well as makeup by Amanda Liles and Rebecca Brown, are well above the standards you would expect from a guerilla company scrambling for locations to perform. Set design, such as it is, horseshoes around the audience, so I'd recommend a seat on the innermost stage-left side of the house where the gang is visible at their restaurant table. Sue and I turned around, craned our necks, and caught most of the scene. But if more seats get filled this week as word of mouth spreads, sightlines could be further impaired.

Don't sweat it. Nearly all the action -- and all the blood -- is up front in this fast-paced production.

Reservoir Dogs’ bite is as good as their bark in COTU’s latest production.
By John G. Hartness
Presented by Citizens of the Universe
Studio 1212

In order for theatre to succeed, it must not be afraid to fail. If there is any one word I would use to describe Citizens of the Universe founder and director James Cartee, “fearless” is near the top of the list. From portraying psychedelic journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the one-man show GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis to staging Fight Club in a parking lot, Cartee has quickly developed a reputation in Charlotte theatre circles as someone who’s not afraid to take chances. And in COTU’s current production, the stage version of Quentin Tarantino’s breakout film hit Reservoir Dogs, those gambles pay off handsomely.

For those unfamiliar with the film, when the director hands out earplugs at intermission, take him up on the offer. The tongue-in-cheek Cartee even reminds us of that with a video message in the middle of the act! Reservoir Dogs thrust Quentin Tarantino into the spotlight upon its debut at the box office, with the rapid-fire, often-profane dialogue raining down on moviegoers like spent shell casings on the floor of the set. The stage adaptation is amazingly faithful to the film, which is good for fans of Tarantino’s work, but rough on the production’s poor laundry crew. Anytime you estimate the stage blood usage in gallons per night, it’s going to be a wild ride.

After a brief breakfast-table chat scene, the real action of the play gets underway with the entrance of the normally unflappable Mr. White, played by a very solid Scott Reynolds, and the gutshot Mr. Orange (Berry Newkirk) into the warehouse rendezvous point after a jewel heist gone bad. Orange and White are joined throughout the play by the other members of the Crayola gang, who use colors as names to hide their identities from their cohorts throughout the planning and execution phases of the job. A distraught Mr. Pink (Chris Freeman) brings in the idea of a rat in their midst, and the psychotic Mr. Blonde (Tom Ollis) brings his own special brand of party favor for the crew.

We watch these normally professional criminals devolve quickly in the face of betrayal, death and possible incarceration, as the pressure cooker of the hideout and distrust quickly begins to take its toll. Cartee’s choice of a photo studio (Jim McGuire’s Studio 1212) as a performance venue may have been inspired by necessity, but seems simply inspired as the studio subs very nicely for an abandoned warehouse without need for much set dressing. And the dressing is minimal indeed, a few chairs, a small platform and a few props. Six lights, an LCD projector and a portable sound system are the major technical elements, and the rest of the burden is on the actors. This is no Broadway tour, with lavish sets to cover up the inadequacies of aging sitcom stars, this is in-your-face acting, without a net.

And this cast and director can handle it. From the moment the lights come up, the cast grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. Reynolds is the anchor in the whirling dervish of activity, holding center calmly and crisply throughout the night. The screaming Newkirk starts the show as a dying bag of blood (and more blood, and more blood), but in Act II takes the stage with a fantastic monologue that mixes direct address and narrative form seamlessly. Tom Ollis always has done crazy well, but this time he may have outdone himself. His Mr. Blonde was downright chilling, and there were times watching him on stage that I wondered if he might have finally tipped over the edge. His partner-in-pain, Brittany Patterson, made a great Charlotte stage debut as the doomed Jenny Nash.

An almost unrecognizable David Holland owned the room as the growly Joe Cabot whenever he was on stage and provided an excellent counterpoint to Colby Davis’ bouncy and hyperactive “Nice Guy” Eddie. But Act II belonged to James Lee Walker II, who walked in as undercover tutor Holdaway and walked off stealing every scene he was in. Walker brought a relaxed physicality and crisp characterization to the bit part of Holdaway that worked exceptionally well opposite the nervous pacing and jittery monologue of Berry Newkirk. Newkirk and Walker dominate the flashbacks of Act II, and never let go of our attention once they’ve grabbed hold. Credit Cartee with excellent casting all around, mixing theatre and improv comedy vets to create a solid ensemble.

This is not a polished production, nor is it a polished venue. The hand painted parking signs and gravel walk down a darkened alley set that stage for us early. But if you’re looking for a little of what Lou Reed walked on, then COTU’s Reservoir Dogs is for you. The language is vintage Tarantino, with plenty f-bombs and racial epithets, so leave the kiddies at home for this one. If you need valet parking for your theatre, then you’ll be better served elsewhere, but for a show with a lot of guts, some excellent performances and gallons of sheer hutzpah, you’ll definitely want to talk a walk on the wild side with these dogs.

RESERVOIR DOGS
By Quenttin Taratino
Directed by James Cartee
Citizens of the Universe
Studio 1212

It’s hard to not be taken in by the sheer ebullience of this production. This production of Reservoir Dogs is like an Andy Hardy film, only this time instead of a barn, the audience is sequestered in a hangar-like artists’ studio, but like those films, we are treated to a plucky group of performers who want nothing more than to “put on a show.”

Based on the 1992 film by Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs follows the plights of seven total strangers who have been brought together to rob a bank. The play, like the film, revels in a mix of violence, pop culture references, and an almost insufferable need to be cool. The good news is if you like Tarantino and/or love the film, than this production will not disappoint. The ensemble is excellent.

I’m not entirely sold on the idea of performing screenplays as plays. Don’t get me wrong, I was completely engaged by some first-class acting and a truly remarkable ensemble. It’s just, especially with Tarantino, we are seduced by clever camera angles, multiple edits, and innovative cinematography. It’s true that Tarantino’s dialogue is clever enough, but once you get past the self consciously ironic sex jokes, the incessant pop culture riffs, and the heavy-handed morality, I’m never sure what it all adds up to. And ultimately, when you strip Tarantino of the one thing that he is arguably strongest at, his visual storytelling, you are only left with his words, and, clever as they are, he’s no David Mamet.

Before I get too much further, let me day, everyone should see this play. This company deserves an audience. Whether I agree with this particular choice of play or not is immaterial, this company is unique and should be championed.

I’m not going to try to summarize the plot too much. Suffice it to say a group of criminals are brought together to rob a bank. They’re not allowed to know each other’s names, so they are given the names of colors. The fly in the ointment, however, is that a cop may or may not be one of the criminals. I’m not going to spoil it here, just in case you’re not familiar with the film. The ending does sneak up on you.

As I’ve said, the ensemble is amazing. Nearly all of the actors are dynamic and engaging. Berry Newkirk as the wounded Mr. Orange and Scott C. Reynolds as the ill-fated Mr. White are particularly good, but the entire cast is fully committed to this production and we are sucked in.

Technically the play is sparse. Slip-covered chairs suggest the escape car, a plank of wood becomes the floor of a warehouse. There’s no need for much. The studio suggests the warehouse very well, and the other few locations are easily produced with an over-sized desk and some assorted chairs. Still, the costumes are wonderful, and the use of firearms (necessitating ear plugs which are generously provided at intermission) is great fun. There’s hardly a misstep in the production save for some fight choreography that needs a little fine tuning and some makeup effects that don’t stand up under the close scrutiny of an audience that is this close to the action. I might also suggest in future productions elevating either the audience or the actors. I missed a great deal of the play in my third row seat.

Again, Citizens of the Universe is a company to support. This is some of the best ensemble acting I’ve seen and this is a group that is seeking to do something new and unique. I’m still not convinced that such a talented company should be producing staged versions of movies, but they’re doing it really well. I look forward to seeing what’s next for this compelling group! Review by Tim Baxter-Ferguson

Tim Baxter-Ferguson is an associate professor of Theatre at Limestone College and Chair of that program. He has had his plays produced throughout the United States and Canada.

Uncle Vanya
2010

 

Theater review: Uncle Vanya
Published 05.18.10
By Perry Tannenbaum

With the Fed and BP expecting all us media folk to cool it for awhile on oil-and-water analogies, let me say that the artistic affinity I expected between director James Cartee and the Russian czar of tragicomedy, Anton Chekhov, to be no closer than chalk and cheese. The prospect of Cartee and the fight-club, reservoir-dog guerillas who populate his Citizens of the Universe tackling Uncle Vanya certainly didn't galvanize the COTU company's fanbase, judging by the turnout at Story Slam for last Friday's late-night performance. As it turns out, the friction between Cartee's hellbent approach to theatre and Chekhov's legendary subtlety proves to be rather fruitful. Instead of fussing with exquisite balances or emphasizing the protagonists' poignant missed opportunities, Cartee glorifies the eccentricities of Chekhov's characters and the comedy. Rather than reminding us of the glowing bittersweetness we find in Chekhov's other masterworks -- The Cherry Orchard, The Three Sisters, and The Seagull -- this Vanya tends to evoke the outrageous absurdities we find in such one-act farces as "The Bear" and "A Marriage Proposal." Keying the shift from subtlety to absurdity is Colby Davis, wearing his heart and entrails on his sleeve as he bellows the hurts, the frustrations, and the hypochondria of Vanya between slurps from a whisky flask. He has adored Yelena Serebryakov for years, but she is married to a far older man, The Professor, whose scholarly pretensions Vanya has financed since the days of Prof. Serebryakov's prior marriage to Vanya's sister. Besides, Yelena is piously devoted to her decrepit Professor and far more attracted to the busy family doctor, Astrov. The visiting Professor's daughter, who manages the estate with Vanya, has been carrying a torch for Astrov that burns no less brightly than Vanya's for Yelena. It's complicated.
Nobody else is quite as high-energy as Davis, but the eccentricity among other key characters is layered so thick that this drama-queen Vanya isn't anything close to a total misfit. As the Professor, Jim Esposito parades onto the stage from the Slam lobby with all the ostentation of a Roman Caesar and presides over his sickroom like a spoiled sultan. Studded with enough face and tongue jewelry to outglitter Liberace, Zannah Kimbrel rubs against Sonia's desire to transcend her physical plainness with a funky Central Avenue ferocity. And with outré props and costuming by Cartee, Charlotte Hampton as Vanya's mother hardly even dabbles in sanity. As for the impoverished landowner Telegin, we get a free-range interpretation as Cartee lets James Lee Walker III play his harmonica.
The COTU guerilla swagger is there from the outset. Off to one side of the Story Slam platform, Davis is half-buried on a couch as Vanya sleeps off his latest binge. On the other side, Cartee mans the rudimentary sound system, cuing the occasional cricket while clad in a greatcoat that could very well have been ripped off the back of a true Russian wino.
While Annette Saunders doesn't pass for 27 as Yelena, she has all the starchy devotion to the Professor you could ask, and there's enough allure left to warrant Vanya's adoration. She is aptly paired with Lou Delassadro as Astrov, who turns out to have more than a medical interest in Yelena's well-being. With Saunders and Delassandro, the tender romantic heart of Chekhov and the elegant demeanor are preserved.

Unsettling for the Stanislavsky purists, but great fun.

UNCLE VANYA
by Anton Chekhov
directed by James Cartee
Citizens of the Universe
StorySlam
May 15-22, 2010

Citizens of the Universe, a Charlotte company that often acts out movies onstage, has committed another sacrilege. As they must know, Chekhov is sacred to many theatre artists, because Konstantin Stanislavski honed his realistic acting "method" on Chekhov's tragicomedies. And that method, in various American forms, permeates most of theatre and film acting today. But COTU has turned Chekhov's esteemed Uncle Vanya into a Saturday Night Live satire—making it outrageously funny, at least at first.

Chekhov insisted that his plays (about the foolish, passionate, self-sabotaging upper-class and their servants in rural Russia over a century ago) were comedies, though Stanislavski and later directors have tended to focus on the tragic elements. With this production, Cartee pushes Chekhov's play into Ionesco territory, finding its wild absurdities and adding more, across elite and popular, past and present cultures. The deep, complex emotions and relationships of the original become cartoonish. This may be initially entertaining, even liberating. But it then becomes tedious like a TV skit going on too long.

Lou Dalessandro, as Dr. Astrov, proves to be a handsome figure with mischievous charm, as he twists his missing mustache or teases the servants. But his passion to save a forest, to stop Vanya's suicide, or to confess his true feelings for Yelena (and against Sonya) gets lost in the translation to satire. Colby Davis puts great energy into portraying Vanya with reckless drunkenness, smarmy sorrow, and violent lust, as if being John Malkovich in revenge against Stanislavski. This evokes more sympathy for the actor, as entertainer, than for the character—especially in his crazy love of, grabbing at, and falling for Yelena. Annette Saunders as Yelena (married to the much older Professor) provides a stoic grace but does not show the twisted feelings within this character, as she poses for the gazes of various men around her, and helps or makes use of the plain-looking Sonya, who has a hopeless love for Astrov.

Likewise, the other actors fit the director's concept well, though that limits what they can do. James Lee Walker II, perhaps the most mutable actor I've seen in Charlotte, gives new meanings to Telegin, who is also known as "Waffles," due to his acne. Walker brings smooth black skin, big smiles, harmonica playing, and pick-pocketing to his trickster turns. Jim Esposito, as the Professor, gives a grotesque mirror to those of us who pose as knowing more than others, while our aging bodies undermine such arrogance. Caitlin Snead is absurdly young to play the old nanny, Marina, but that fits here, too. Zannah Kimbrel has studs in her lower lip, as Sonya (the Professor's daughter), perhaps connecting her motherless plain Jane to our time. And Charlotte Hampton, as Vanya's mom and Sonya's grandma, Maman, reads a big book entitled The Liberated Woman, pulls smaller books from her bosom, and reads steamy scenes from an Anne Rice novel during the scene changes.

The small Story Slam stage allows for two to three acting areas with minimal furniture. Prerecorded Russian music offers stirring spirits, more authentic than the show. (The night I went, Virgo Musik also provided a wonderfully lively hour of new American songs, with acoustic guitar and violin, prior to Vanya. I especially enjoyed the ghost ballads and the love-crush tango.) But a bill comes due from Stanislavki near the play's end—added by the director, as if admitting the guilty pleasures here, with a classic tragicomedy trimmed and twisted into soap opera. Review by Mark Pizzato

Mark Pizzato is Professor of Theatre at UNC-Charlotte and author of Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain and Theatres of Human Sacrifice. His plays have been published by Aran Press and his screenplays, produced as short films, have won New York Film Festival and Minnesota Community Television awards.

Trainspotting

2010

   

Vid- Part 1

Vid- Part 2

Vid- Part 3

Vid- Part 4

Vid- Part 5

Vid- Part 6

Vid- Part 7

Vid- Part 8

September 22nd, 2010 by Perry Tannenbaum in Arts

COTU unloads the ultimate gross-out

I’ve been married to my dear indulgent Sue for more than 11 years and dragging her to see local theater productions for more than 12. But before last Saturday night, she never had a better reason to ask me, “How could you take me to see such shit?” For in the current Citizens of the Universe adaptation of Trainspotting, the sensational 1996 Brit flick revel in the pitfalls of heroin addiction (based on Irvine Welsh’s novel), flying shit bespatters the walls of the Story Slam performing space at the end of the opening scene. Then bookending Act 1, it comes splashing toward us, out of the nastiest toilet bowl in Scotland, just before intermission.

Fortunately, the two scenes forming this fecal sandwich are nearly as funny as they are gross, certainly among the most hilarious I’ve seen this year. Even more fortunately, director James Cartee and his guerilla chemists aren’t simulating the smells of these scenes along with the sludgy sights. Otherwise, Sue and I would have made a beeline for Central Avenue. We were courteously warned, by the playbill and Cartee’s curtain speech, that the front rows should be considered splash zones (although sewage was not mentioned), so we did retreat to the second row. Tipped off during the break that there would be no further shit in Act 2 – or I should say shite, since most of the Edinburgh folk have accents thicker than diarrhea – we returned safely to the front.

The font of all the shite spewage is our narrator/hero Mark Renton, whom we first encounter waking up in a strange bed that he has thoroughly befouled, aside from the aforementioned solids, with vomit, urine, and a sprinkle of semen. Such are the repellent degradations experienced by a truly devout junkie, and it would be cruel to divulge how Mark’s private shame hilariously and unforgettably explodes at his hosts’ breakfast table. Suffice it to say that Berry Newkirk, so scintillating last month as the mastermind in Queen City Theatre’s Rope, is every bit as perfect here and far more charming. And let’s not overlook Mark’s redeeming qualities, for it is on the road to kicking his dependency that Newkirk must muck around in that ugly, graffiti-decorated toilet. The graffiti, by set designer Diego Francico, is lavished over a scenic concept best described as urban outhouse.

It’s Stephen West-Rogers who turns this production into something of a foreign language travail without the benefit of subtitles, for I may be wildly exaggerating if I claim to have understood 40% of the slang-infested brogue he speaks as Francis Begbie, Mark’s best bud. Still the violent vehemence of this obviously cynical and embittered young man needs no translation, and West-Rogers is mercifully intelligible in his other six roles.

 

Everyone else in the cast has at least three different roles as this picaresque kaleidoscope unfolds. Joel Sumner is the most affecting as Tommy, the clean-cut friend who too easily persuades Mark to cook up his first dose of smack – and is a totally lost soul from that moment on. Chris Freeman is most memorable as Johnny Swan, the déclassé local drug dealer who isn’t above it all.

 

Women have lesser roles here – we are back in the 80s, after all – but they can be vivid nonetheless. This is especially true for Mimi Harkness, who is an abused girlfriend, a battered wife, and perhaps most indelibly, a stoned dominatrix among her seven incarnations. Kaddie Sharpe is quite capable as a couple of the girlfriends we encounter along the way, including the one whose home Mark wakes up in at the start, but she’s not the sensation she was last year in Fight Club. On the other hand, Jenny Wright is haunting as Allison, a rather criminally unfit mother – to us and to Mark, who hallucinates about Allison’s dead baby in the throes of withdrawal.

 

A top 10 film in BFI’s list of the 100 best Brit flicks of the 20th Century, Trainspotting wasn’t exactly drawing a sellout crowd at Story Slam last Saturday night when we went. So this week, they’re reducing tickets to $10. At that price, you’ve got to see this shit.

 

TRAINSPOTTING

Based on the novel by Irvine Welsh

Adapted for the stage by Harry Gibson

Directed by James Cartee

Citizens of the Universe

September 15-26, 2010

Story Slam

Based on the cult novel by Irvine Welsh which follows the lives of several young people in Leith, Edinburg all of whom are either addicted to heroin or whose lives revolve around others with such addictions, Trainspotting is a energetic, obscene, sometimes poignant evening. Set in the 1980s, the play revels in the lowest levels of humanity. No bodily function is off limits and any fluid that can be emitted by the male or female body is referred to at least once. Usually this is to good effect, and some good laughs are created by taking the audience to the edge of their comfort level and beyond. Still, with scene after scene after scene of depravity one begins to wish for a little something more. Welsh’s novel both celebrates and lampoons the disaffected youth of 1980s Scotland.

 

The play makes some attempt at touting redemption, but this seems perfunctory. It is clear the play, like the novel, is more interested in shocking us than in truly examining these lost souls. Still, despite all of this, its youthful, angry, anti-establishment, rant is heartfelt and effective it just never really adds up to anything concrete. So should you see this morally ambiguous mess? Yes, absolutely! Citizens of the Universe‘s production is so sincere, so devoid of self importance or snobbery, that it takes what is essentially an aging hipster’s wet dream and transforms it into a sad riff on the seductive trap of addiction.

 

The ensemble, though uneven, does a nice job of projecting the too-cool-for-life sentiment of the heroin chic. Accents are handled well-enough and Stephen West-Rogers’ homage to Sean Connery in one brief scene gets a well-deserved laugh. Berry Newkirk, last seen in Queen City’s Rope gets more opportunities to emote here as Mark. His character tries to be good despite the lack of anything for him to live for. He slowly becomes aware of the sinking ship he and his friends are on, and eventually tries to save himself. Newkirk conveys all of this nicely. Jenny Wright holds her own against the depravity of the men in this ensemble, able to shock as well as the best of them, but still finding some small moments of reflection and tenderness. Stephen West-Rogers does well as Begbie (and others) and is perhaps the best at the thick dialects which forms the core of one quite humorous monologue. For the most part the cast is quite good and it is clear all are quite committed to this production. Every now and then you see an ensemble that feels more like you’re watching the members of some indie punk rock band than an acting troupe, that’s what I felt here!

 

Special mention must be made of Diego Francica’s phenomenal set. Setting the play in a men’s room is inspired and appropriate. The wall-to-wall mural of Bread and Water also enhances the nihilistic environment. The minimal lighting equipment is put to good use by Eric Winkenwerder. Though I like the use of original music, some preshow music and other choices were confusing to me. Though the text of the play seems set very clearly in the eighties with its mention of AIDS as a certain death sentence, the music is quite contemporary. Another minor quibble—no mention in the program (unless its in the microscopic print at the bottom which no one can read) is made of this being based on the novel of the same name nor of the author Irvine Welsh. Its clear that COTU celebrates the arts and the artist, and I imagine this slight was certainly unintentional.

 

When I attended on Friday night, the crowd was small but appreciative. I hope people will find the time to support this exciting theatre troupe. Like Queen City Theatre, COTU has a strong identity and a clear mission, I hope they can find the large audiences they deserve. Trainspotting is good, shocking fun. So leave grandma and the kids at home and head out to Story Slam! Review by Tim Baxter-Ferguson

 

Tim Baxter-Ferguson is an associate professor of Theatre at Limestone College and Chair of that program. He has had his plays produced throughout the United States and Canada.

 

Trainspotting Review

by Colby Davis on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 2:35am

Choose This Show

by Colby Davis

 

I did not see Trainspotting when it was first produced here in Charlotte by the Citizen's of the Universe, nor have I read the novel it is based on. I hear there is an Alec Guinness movie as well. I’ll have to check that out. As virgin as my experience was to this rollercoaster of disgusting hilarity, I knew it involved one thing at least: Heroin. That’s it. Well, there are a lot of things that come to mind when you think of heroin. Things like spoons, needles, rubber bands, and even HIV. But what the common junkie doesn’t grasp a hold of is clearly portrayed by Jimmy Cartee’s Scatpack. Choose life, because the antithesis is an oxymoronic disillusioned reality of peaks and valleys. Even when someone does “choose life” they still have to account for their past decisions. Decisions that would haunt normal people, but who needs reasons when you have heroin?

I was impressed at how the show, almost simultaneously, made me want to gag and laugh at the same time. There were multiple times when, I warn those faint of stomach, I embarrassed myself trying to keep from throwing up. I say embarrassed because I didn’t want to take away from what was going onstage. “Just think of it as oatmeal and chocolate syrup”, another show seer said to me. I was not able to. The show sucked me in like blood in a syringe and shot me up with dose after dose of brutal, raw, uncensored glory. Censoring this show is akin to digitally putting Jabba back in to the original Star Wars film. Don’t do it!

 The cast was a fantastic ensemble, changing hats and wigs at a whim, and always bold with their characters. Berry Newkirk leads the group as the main protagonist of the story and brings you along his journey from smack, rehab, and everywhere in between and after. He only leaves this character for a brief…ummmm…period...during in which he plays an out of towner at a local pub. The bar maiden, Jenny Wright, uses her sex to her advantage in a scene I will not soon forget. Joel Sumner and Stephen West Rogers both are as hilarious as they are threateningly present. The rest of the cast, Chris Freeman, Mimi Harkness, and Kaddie Sharpe have fantastically sexy and sadistic cameos that leave you wanting for more. I’m relapsing as I type

The set is beautiful. Black walls with art you might see tagged on any poor building in Charlotte. Three bathroom stalls are the main coming and goings for the characters, props, and effects. Fitting with the themes in the piece, the toilets to me are gateways to possibilities. All throughout, the negativity of the material world is flushed away by the monologues of tempted youths. The show does a great job at showing you what it truly means to be in a fully orgasmic state of mind, but is keen on focusing more on the horrors of its aftermath. Some get a chance to move on, hooray. Some don’t, ah well. But for any theatre goer with a brain open to fantastic storytelling, this won’t be so easy to get over.

 

Prince Bride

2011

A grungy royal wedding: The Princess Bride
By Perry Tannenbaum

 

Since its humble beginnings in a backroom at The Graduate with Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis just over two years ago, James Cartee's Citizens of the Universe has prowled around the Plaza Midwood area, spreading the company's deliciously conflicted dogma. They've presented quixotically ambitious projects in the grungiest locales — Reservoir Dogs in a Bohemian studio off 10th Street and Fight Club in a parking lot off Central Avenue. Up the road at Story Slam, where they found shelter until the whole shebang was disgorged back in January, they veered from the streetwise grittiness of Trainspotting to the pastoral elegance of Uncle Vanya.

To the questions are you brutal or pretentious, punk or poetic, crass or crusading, Cartee and his COTU guerrillas have always answered yes.

Now in the wake of the Story Slam blowup, COTU is staging an amazing resurrection — in the shadow of the Time Warner Cable Arena. Yes, the two-year-old guerilla group has ventured out of its Plaza Midwood cradle, presenting William Goldman's The Princess Bride at The Breakfast Club in a stage adaptation by Johnathan Fourniadis of the screenplay.

Breakfast Club isn't the shabbiest joint in the Uptown, but surrounded last Thursday by nearly vacant parking lots sporting absurd $15 and $20 signs in anticipation of the NCAA regionals the following night, the three-story nightclub boasted formidable eyesore credentials. We steeled ourselves with medieval courage and parked as close as we could to the front entrance, which faces away from N. Caldwell Street. Go ahead and fearlessly do the same, for we gratefully learned that Breakfast Club covers the parking tab — even when some stooge leaves a citation on your windshield.

More pleasant is the surprise when you climb the clanging outdoor staircase to Breakfast Club's second level. OK, you may still think it's a dive once you're inside, but it's marvelously apt for the rough magic Cartee and his co-director Mimi Harkness seek to create. There's an overhanging balcony that serves beautifully for the evil Prince Humperdinck's wedding to our darling Buttercup and for assorted royal proclamations.

There is vast interior space, minimizing set changes when we trek from Buttercup's homely homestead to the Cliffs of Insanity and from there to the Fire Swamp — or when Buttercup's true love Westley is finally imprisoned and tortured on The Machine. Even our storyteller and his pesky audience, Grand Dad and Grand Kid, have their own little nook where they can camp out and occasionally interact with the fairy tale protagonists — particularly when Buttercup and Westley presume to smooch.

Suzi Hartness contributes a marvelous set of costumes, from the dwarf brigand Vizzini up to the Turkish giant Fezzik, with plenty of royals, lackeys, tramps and swashbucklers in between. But the real reason this is such a technical apotheosis for COTU is that we see Cartee ensconced in a soundbooth running light and sound cues with electrical equipment actually designed for that purpose, instead of his customary car headlights and kitchen utensils.

Cartee always overachieves in attracting artistic and acting talent, so the cast will likely blow you away most of the time. A Tarradiddle mainstay at Children's Theatre, Lesley Anne Giles knows exactly how to tilt the title character toward an adult audience, but Thorin Thompson is still a work-in-progress as Buttercup's beleaguered lover Westley, acting with dashing credibility but needing to pump up the volume to full theater level.

They're supported alarmingly well, with impressive debuts from Errol Sulleyman as the priggish barbarian Humperdinck and Dominick Weaver as the six-fingered Count Rugan. One unexpected chink in the solid armor is Berry Newkirk as fencing master Inigo, his Spanish accent often an impenetrable thicket. Comically upstaging everyone, David G. Holland and Poppy Prittchit wear tons of makeup and costume, doubling as Humperdinck's doddering royal parents and their lowliest subjects, Miracle Max and spouse.

Princely fun.

 

THE PRINCESS BRIDE
By William Goldman
Adapted for the stage by Johnathan Fourniadis
Directed by James Cartee & Mimi Harkness
Citizens of the Universe
The Breakfast Club
March 16 – 27, 2011

How can you not like The Princess Bride? And how can you not appreciate Citizens of the Universe for taking chances, and coming up with unexpected venues. In this case it is The Breakfast Club, a bar/dance club in uptown Charlotte. As COTU has proven before, you can do theatre anywhere as long as you have actors, directors, and audience. Oh yes, and a first-rate script. William Goldman’s satirical fairy tale is a favorite of many and with good reason.

Buttercup orders around Farm Boy until she realizes that she loves him as much as he loves her. He sets off to make his fortune so they can marry, but when she learns he’s been killed, she begrudgingly agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck. There are the pirates, a giant, double-crosses, human-sized rats, and the snappy, wonderful dialogue you remember.

One drawback with such a familiar story is that the movie has been shown over and over on television. You have to try and leave comparisons behind, because on stage, in this venue, it just can’t possibly have the expensive production values, or camera tricks of a film. Yet directors James Cartee and Mimi Harkness make the most of the second floor area which has numerous openings, doorways, and levels where actors make entrances and exits.

Off to one side Grand Dad (Ted Delorme, solid as usual), and Grand Kid (Abigail Olsen, sufficiently pouty), engage in the book reading/storytelling of The Princess Bride. A nice touch is when Grand Kid has some long distance interaction with the characters. Leslie Anne Giles is perfectly cast as the pretty, feisty Buttercup. Her love Westley is played by Thorin Thompson who certainly looks the part, but the audience strains to hear him at times. This is not uncommon for those who work in film, then come to the stage. (Mr. Thompson has produced and directed a film in Charlotte recently.) Errol Sulleyman brings just the right energy to the effete Prince Humperdinck.

One of the highlights of the show is when Miracle Max (David G. Holland) and Valerie (Poppy Prittchit) revive the tortured Westley who is only mostly dead. They are over-the-top hilarious, and every bit as good as the originals, and that’s saying a lot. Joel Summer adds laugh-out-loud bits as Vizzini/The Albino/The Distinguished Clergyman. Berry Newkirk admirably stays in character with accent as the sullen Inigo Montoya out to avenge his father’s killer. Ian Fermy, Dominick Weaver, and Russell Bennet, Jr. round out the cast with their contributions to the zaniness.

Technical elements are challenging in this space, but Charles Holmes does an excellent job as fight director with the actors wielding their weapons well and in synch with each other. Suzi Hartness is also to be commended for the colorful costumes.

The acoustics are not the best, and the night of the performance was an unusually warm evening that made it somewhat uncomfortable. Yet, Citizens of the Universe is the closest thing Charlotte has to avant-garde theatre. It’s not perfect, and in its imperfections we are shown why it can be so much fun to suspend your disbelief. I hope theatre fans will come out and support this production. You may find out why, with all the hard work and limited rewards, so many have an appreciation for live theatre. Review by Ann Marie Oliva

Ann Marie Oliva is an award-winning local playwright with productions across the United States, a published fiction and non-fiction writer, and reviewer. She is the producer/editor of ARTS à la Mode and a judge for the National Youth Theatre Awards. Ann Marie is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Love Conquers All: A Quiet Evening with Sid & Nancy

2011

  

GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis

2011  

The Merry Wives of Windsor
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 12:28 pm

Written after the two parts of Henry IV and before its sequel, Henry V, William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor is the only play by the Bard to be set in his own time. There is very little blank verse in the script, which substantiates the supposition that the uncharacteristic prose piece was rushed through the assembly line at the command of Queen Elizabeth I in the space of just 14 days - and perhaps hastily premiered on the playwright's 33rd birthday.

The raison d'être for this merry comedy is the fat knight immortalized in the Henriad, Sir John Falstaff, whom Her Majesty wished to see in the throes of love. You can judge for yourself at UpStage in NoDa whether Shakespeare truly fulfilled the queen's command, in a fresh production by Citizens of the Universe that doesn't seem to take place in any specific era at all.

COTU director Megan Sky may not even be insisting that we view the motley crowd onstage as fully human. Most of them are put in masks designed by Citizens peace-keeper James Cartee. They accentuate the bestiality of the whole lot, and tip the balance of the emotion driving Sir John further away from spiritual love to animal lust. It's a bit disorienting at first, especially with so many people onstage. Their aims are nebulous and have no interest in Sir John, but once the central merriment kicks in, it's a jolly ride.

The critical wringing-of-hands over Shakespeare's retooling of an audience favorite has now continued for 417 years, despite the fact that Verdi's operatic version of the Merry Wives comedy, Falstaff, long ago made this lusty, bibbing version of Sir John into the one best-known and loved around the world. Minus about 100 pounds - and some of his "alacrity in sinking" - that is the Falstaff you'll find here, toting tankards big enough to make a dent in the weight differential by the end of COTU's run.

Inside a Cartee mask, David Pollack isn't merely red-faced as the dissolute knight, he's positively ruby, with bulbous cheeks hanging about his mouth. While the mask and its pendulous cheeks don't cover Pollack's mouth, a good portion of what he says seems to emanate Santa-wise from his gut. Nor is there any compelling reason for Sir John to be besotted by the crème de Windsor, for the plain fashions worn by Amanda Liles as Mistress Margaret Page and Farrell Paules as Mistress Alice Ford don't compensate for the disfigurements they suffer from their masks. Pure pleasures of the flesh, along with the delicacies afforded by a prosperous estate, must be their chief attractions.

Sundry suitors pursuing Margaret's daughter, Ann Page, mostly make the sybaritic Sir John look and sound elegant by comparison. Nancy Gaines takes the early lead as the most repellent suitor, spouting a thick brogue as the priestly Sir Hugh Evans - in a mask that has her looking like a gilded chipmunk. But she, um he, is eventually far overtaken by Doctor Caius, a Frenchman whose accent occasionally spills into Italy in Tom Ollis' booming rendition, once his voice gets past the sharp nauseating teeth of whatever hideous creature he might be in Cartee's most outré mask. My guess is a cross between a rabid beaver and a warthog.

Becca Thompson, one of the few performers not outfitted with a mask (*note: she was in a blue mask) , gives a suspender-snapping dimension to Margaret's husband George that you'll never see anywhere else. Peter Engel doesn't need a mask as Frank Ford. His hyper-jealousy as Alice's husband is so intense that cartoon smoke seems to issue from his ears and hover over his head. Of course, Shakespeare screws the plot tension so prettily, humiliating Falstaff in three consecutive randy rendezvous with Mistress Ford. Meanwhile the wives' cleverness allows Sir John to neatly escape Frank's frantic searches, with exits right under his nose in his own home, stoking Frank's jealousy after each of the first two trysts.

The slapdash COTU production style probably carries over too much into the final midnight scene, where Falstaff's shame finally becomes public. More flamboyant extremes from the lightboard of darkness and fairy shimmer would help bring stronger accents to the magic and the farce. Yet Sky does deploy the spritely imposters all around the house, mingling with the audience and creating a neat demarcation between the masking Shakespeare wrote and the masking COTU has piled on.

No account of my impressions would be complete without a special shout-out to Deanna Pendragon aka Big Mamma D, the imperial immensity who portrays Miss Quickly - the hideous Doc Caius' bawdy emissary to the Page household. She actually my nominee to play Falstaff if COTU ever rolls him out again.

Night of the Iguana

‘The Night of the Iguana’ brings us rare Williams

By Lawrence Toppman

Thursday, Aug. 28th

“The Night of the Iguana” represents the dividing line between the early hits that made Tennessee Williams beloved – mainly “The Glass Menagerie,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – and the later flops written on his descent into obscurity.

After “Iguana” ran for nine months in 1961-62, no new play of his held the Broadway stage longer than 15 weeks. “Iguana” has the strengths of his masterpieces – tenderness, dark humor, an unashamed streak of poetry – while revealing the weaknesses of the plays that would follow: It’s diffuse, occasionally repetitive, not wholly credible. Like almost all his plays, it’s about the devastating fear of loneliness and the lengths to which it drives us.

It has driven disgraced priest Larry Shannon into the Mexican jungle to lead tours of church ladies and seduce willing, underage girls. That crew lands at Maxine Faulk’s dumpy hotel, where Shannon has slept off previous bouts of drunkenness and depression. There he meets resilient, gentle Hannah Jelkes; she travels with her frail grandfather, Nonno, and sells his poems and her paintings.

Megan Sky directs a Citizens of the Universe production that brings out elements I didn’t remember so strongly from the 1976 Broadway revival, especially the jokes and Shannon’s angry self-disgust. (Brian Willard’s at his best there and stresses something easily forgotten: Shannon has a fever throughout the action.)

Yet Sky doesn’t fully expose the play’s wistful sadness. Stephanie DiPaolo’s well-grounded Hannah seems a survivor from the start, not someone whose outer softness slowly gives way and reveals inner strength. Her heartbreaking monologue about a strange romantic encounter, which encapsulates all Williams wants to say about loneliness, is more analytical than empathetic.

The major characters reflect Williams more clearly than in any other play: the anguished atheism of Shannon, the naughty humor of Maxine (Nancy Gaines), the rebuffed kindness of Hannah and the fragility of Nonno, the aged poet who struggles to keep making verses and shouts them at an ever less appreciative audience. (Don McManus plays Nonno as a senile attention-seeker.)

The results are poignant, even when the writing doesn’t succeed. Maxine’s captive iguana becomes a clunky symbol for Shannon himself, once she tries metaphorically to tie him down. The mind-body-spirit triangle of Shannon-Maxine-Hannah gets underlined a bit heavily. Boorish German tourists remain ugly, useless caricatures.

Yet Williams’ command of language never deserts him. He’s not afraid to be sentimental, and he makes that style work for him. As the exhausted Nonno creates a lovely final poem only we may ever hear, we remember that Williams’ writing retained some of its beauty and power long after people stopped listening.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/08/28/5134034/the-night-of-the-iguana-brings.html#storylink=cpy

“The Night of the Iguana” represents the dividing line between the early hits that made Tennessee Williams beloved – mainly “The Glass Menagerie,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – and the later flops written on his descent into obscurity.

After “Iguana” ran for nine months in 1961-62, no new play of his held the Broadway stage longer than 15 weeks. “Iguana” has the strengths of his masterpieces – tenderness, dark humor, an unashamed streak of poetry – while revealing the weaknesses of the plays that would follow: It’s diffuse, occasionally repetitive, not wholly credible. Like almost all his plays, it’s about the devastating fear of loneliness and the lengths to which it drives us.

It has driven disgraced priest Larry Shannon into the Mexican jungle to lead tours of church ladies and seduce willing, underage girls. That crew lands at Maxine Faulk’s dumpy hotel, where Shannon has slept off previous bouts of drunkenness and depression. There he meets resilient, gentle Hannah Jelkes; she travels with her frail grandfather, Nonno, and sells his poems and her paintings.

Megan Sky directs a Citizens of the Universe production that brings out elements I didn’t remember so strongly from the 1976 Broadway revival, especially the jokes and Shannon’s angry self-disgust. (Brian Willard’s at his best there and stresses something easily forgotten: Shannon has a fever throughout the action.)

Yet Sky doesn’t fully expose the play’s wistful sadness. Stephanie DiPaolo’s well-grounded Hannah seems a survivor from the start, not someone whose outer softness slowly gives way and reveals inner strength. Her heartbreaking monologue about a strange romantic encounter, which encapsulates all Williams wants to say about loneliness, is more analytical than empathetic.

The major characters reflect Williams more clearly than in any other play: the anguished atheism of Shannon, the naughty humor of Maxine (Nancy Gaines), the rebuffed kindness of Hannah and the fragility of Nonno, the aged poet who struggles to keep making verses and shouts them at an ever less appreciative audience. (Don McManus plays Nonno as a senile attention-seeker.)

The results are poignant, even when the writing doesn’t succeed. Maxine’s captive iguana becomes a clunky symbol for Shannon himself, once she tries metaphorically to tie him down. The mind-body-spirit triangle of Shannon-Maxine-Hannah gets underlined a bit heavily. Boorish German tourists remain ugly, useless caricatures.

Yet Williams’ command of language never deserts him. He’s not afraid to be sentimental, and he makes that style work for him. As the exhausted Nonno creates a lovely final poem only we may ever hear, we remember that Williams’ writing retained some of its beauty and power long after people stopped listening.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/08/28/5134034/the-night-of-the-iguana-brings.html#storylink=cpy

CA&T Awards

2015

The of the World Sampler Platter

They're Playing Our Song and The End of the World Sampler Platter
A weekend of lightweights and quickies
By Perry Tannenbaum

My fondest memories of Marvin Hamlisch are his 1975 Tony Award-winning score for A Chorus Line and his Oscar-winning tearjerker, "The Way We Were." Sadly, these pleasant memories are far outweighed by my most vivid memories of Hamlisch, when he popped up on every talk show on TV, indefatigably hawking his latest Broadway musical, They're Playing Our Song. I can still see him sitting at the keyboard with his relentless energy and wholesome cheer, playing that title song and selling it, selling it, selling it. Compounding the numbing repetitiveness of his guest appearances was the nightmarish repetitiveness of Carole Bayer Sager's lyric.

So while They're Playing Our Song followed in 1979 close on the heels of Hamlisch's greatest successes, I avoided seeing it with the same zeal that I'd avoid Ebola. For a show that tallied over a thousand performances on Broadway, this has been far easier than you might expect — even for a theater critic who has covered nearly every Charlotte theatrical during the past 27 years. The current Song at CPCC is only the second that has been staged under my watch, the first since 1990.

One of the easiest things to forget about any theater piece during a span of 24 years is how small it is. Whether measured against Hamlisch's own Chorus Line or the newborn 101 Dalmatians currently running at ImaginOn, the math is pretty devastating. Compared to the 26 and 18 roles written into those respective shows, the autobiographical Our Song only puts two characters onstage, composer Vernon Gersch and lyricist Sonia Walsk. Two core questions must be settled over the course of the evening: Can this couple become a successful songwriting team, and can they form an intimate relationship?

Hamlisch and Sager beef up the cast by adding a backup trio for each of the two protagonists, ostensibly representing the inner selves Vernon and Sonia keep hidden from each other but really souping up the vocal arrangements and cutting into the vast open spaces surrounding them at Halton Theater. The Bankable One, Neil Simon, pitches in by adding a comical complication in his script, the unshakable shadow of Sonia's needy, clingy ex-boyfriend Leon. Director/choreographer Ron Chisholm also provides filler, placing music director Ellen Robison and a robust instrumental octet upstage, so when Vernon and Sonia have their climactic showdown at the recording studio, it doesn't look like they're sparring in a laboratory clean room.

Lifting this lightweight weakling largely falls upon the able shoulders of Andy Faulkenberry, a proven leading man and triple threat for more than five years. His Vernon certainly draws upon the determined forbearance we saw from him last year as Princeton in Avenue Q, but he draws much more heavily from the hyperactivity we saw from him in his 2009 debut, playing the Cat in the Hat in Seussical. One more facet of Faulkenberry's talent emerges here, for if he isn't actually playing those upright pianos and accompanying himself at the keyboards, he's doing the best imitation I'll ever see.

Vivian Tong, best remembered as Christmas Eve in Avenue Q, has the unenviable task of being even perkier and more irritating than Vernon as the perpetually tardy Sonia with her ever-present baggage. Gushing relentlessly and moving around with whirlwind capriciousness, Tong struggles heroically to make the selfish, neurotic and irresponsible Sonia appealing, but my immunity to peppiness was never quite breached.

Nor do Faulkenberry and Tong have much to work with, musically or emotionally. There are just nine songs in They're Playing, closer to the eight in Dalmatians than the dozen in Chorus Line. That's just one more song than a kiddie musical that runs 37 minutes less than CP's 2:03 but is far more packed with interesting action. Truth is, Joan Cushing probably worked harder on her score than Hamlisch and Sager worked on theirs. Aside from the stultifying repetition of the toy locomotive title song, there are two others — "Workin' It Out" and "Fill in the Words" — that are noteworthy for their scarcity of lyrics.

But you know what? When Faulkenbery and Tong take their turns singing "They're Playing My Song," they make a pretty big splash in this small musical, both of them lively and charming. Now that's some pretty impressive heavy lifting.

It's not an encouraging omen when you look down at your playbill and find that one of the short plays you're about to see bears a title that misquotes a famous line by T.S. Eliot. Sure enough, The End of the World Sampler Platter, presented by Citizens of the Universe, turned out to be a fairly bumpy ride, with Kacy Southerland's "But With a Whimper" about par for the course.

Nine of the 14 quickie plays assembled by COTU for their weekend run at UpStage were on view when I attended the closing night on Sunday, and Southerland's 10-minute play about the distressingly few career paths available to a stressed-out college grad opened the second half of the program. It also typified how broadly the "end of the world" idea could be taken by the neophyte playwrights who participated. "Ides" by Scott gru-Bell took us back to the death of the Confederacy, reminding us of enduring racism and John Wilkes Booth.

"Earth 2.0" by George Bohmfalk took us to a product meeting in God's office as the Almighty conferred with Satan and Jesus on how to relaunch creation after humanity has botched the 1.0. That opening play was one of the evening's highlights, along with Ashley Muse Edwards' "The Juggler," about the eccentric man who keeps the universe in order and the shrink who has drawn the assignment to deal with him. COTU founder James Cartee, who is eccentricity, was stellar in this.

Lastly there was Matt Kenyon's zany "The End of the World — The Play" on some distant planet where a love triangle between a virgin, a hunk and a scientist is punctuated by launching Adam and Eve, the newborns of the hunk's dead wife, into space — Superman style — as their planet perishes. The triangle disintegrated as emphatically as the planet. Threesome!

My City MagazineOct 17, Drama with James Nov Dec 2014
DRAMA
with James Lee Walker II

I got my first theater buzz in over a decade, and by no means do I mean any offence to any beautiful experience I’ve had in my public cubical, the stage, my house, my home. What I mean is I walked off stage and all of the colors were more vivid, sounds were brighter as if they were the production of Tokyo Pop engineers, and I felt stronger than ten minutes before. The thing I performed was written and directed by me. It was written years ago, edited heavily recently, and was performed for The Citizens of the Universe one act showcase, The End of the World Sampler Platter.

All of the one acts were written directed and performed by locals. James Cartee has been working on the concept and execution for a long while now. To date it is my favorite COTU production. There was a script written by Cartee titled Vortex that never made it to stage. I want to mainly blame myself due to the lack of availability I offered. Just me and James on stage talking our existence into oblivion with a coin vortex as our metaphoric engine. Darn it. Yet, the theme ‘End of The World’ lay heavily as it exploited variation. Such contrasting commentary on the same subject grabbed your focus and forced it to find the end of each.

OK, so my favorite piece was called, ‘The End of the World - The Play’ written by Matt Kenyon and directed by Mary Mo Sharpe. The script was 15 minutes of hilarious substance and camp. Well-acted camp is a knack you can catch even if you don’t have Bruce Campbell’s blood. These guys got it, and the translation of the text was master crafted by Mary Mo. I mentioned Tromaville (They produced such film gems as ‘The Toxic Avenger’, and ‘Class of Nuke-em High’) later on the evening on the night I revealed my appreciation of her work. We both smiled and our conversation was liberated from a sentence of over analysis.

Stepping off of that stage, watching the other one acts and watching my peers work and perform wasn’t at all the end to my arts induced high, not at all, I’ve been on a bender. I am to start hosting a local film night at The Common Market in Plaza-Midwood. This localized sense of patriotism isn’t a new thing for me, but the last few months I’ve had some experiences that make me feel so right in my choice to stay here and cultivate my art. This arts community feels more important, more credible than I believe another community can be. Hopefully if you find that sentiment naïve, and you live and play in Charlotte, you will still hope it can be or be active in making it true anyway.

A few months ago, I ran the actor auditions for the 48 Hour Film Project. I wrote a monologue, trying to keep in mind that these films are going to be short, in many different genera, and that I was writing it for men and women. I titled it ‘Trust Me’, I copied and pasted it to the great Will Fisher, who was the mastermind behind this year’s 48. I sent it via Face Book, and never saw where he posted it, but I imagine the title ‘Trust Me’ was not left in bold. It wasn’t when I’d copied and pasted it in the message, but I didn’t think anything of that. So when the first actor started their monologue with the words “Trust me” I was a little taken aback. Then I reveled in the awesomeness of watching thirty different people say, “Trust me” and read a 150 word monologue that I wrote. Some delivered it very seriously, some were hilarious. I haven’t written a New York Times listed best seller yet, but I can’t imagine that would make me feel as proud of what I’d written. It’s not like I’d be able to get thirty different people to read it to me no matter how great the book was.

So no particular reviews out of me, this issue, of any show in particular or any artist or actor in particular. I am writing this because I am buzzed. I am high off of community right now. I like writing about art, writing as art, performing art, and patronizing art. There were so many shows that went by over the last few months that I wish that I’d gotten to see, Footloose at Theater Charlotte, The Vagina Monologues at Upstage, and so many others were on my list. I’m disappointed when I don’t make shows that I say I’m going to, but over the last few months I have been having a strange drive for making and nurturing new connections that almost dulls my disappointment.

I saw so many theater actors at the 48 Hour Film Project Auditions. There were so many first time actors and directors in the End of the World Sampler Platter at Upstage. Film makers hear about my ‘Local Film Night’ and you can hear them dusting off their lenses, or polishing them, or whatever film makers clean up before they start using it to make film. “I’m excited.” They say. I say, “I’m excited, too!”, and what’s crazy to me is that I mean it. I really do.

I picture many new multimedia theater presentations in the next coming year. I see a bunch of well-versed stage actors setting screens a blaze and taking a film to a place where is echoes all the way to Indy film fame. I see gig musicians replacing pit musicians in order to take a stuffy old musical and rock the average nineteen year old ‘Book of Mormon’ fan so hard they get mad at their parents for not telling them how cool ‘Anything Goes’ was. I get exhilaration from performing, sure, but it isn’t about me, it’s about us. It’s about art. Do art, hard.

A Disturbance in Whitechapel

Theater reviews: The Game's Afoot, or Holmes for the Holidays, more
CPCC Theatre's latest keeps you laughing and guessing
By Perry Tannenbaum

Even if you aren't familiar with Ken Ludwig's most successful scripts — Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo and Crazy for You — the full title of his more recent frolic, The Game's Afoot, or Holmes for the Holidays tells you what to expect and what the playwright's strategy will be. After conquering stage, screen and TV, Sherlock gets a shot at Christmas in a comedy now running at CPCC. You can also readily deduce that Ludwig aims to keep you laughing and guessing.

Admirers of Ludwig's hits will also anticipate that Sherlock's sleuthing will be smothered in a showbiz ambiance and garnished with backstage lore. What's startling here is that, instead of his usual mash-up of showbiz stereotypes and history, Ludwig builds his comedy mystery around an actual theater legend, actor/playwright William Gillette. In many ways, most notably the deerstalker cap and the "Elementary" catchphrase, Gillette invented Holmes for the American theater, and it was his own adaptation of half a dozen Arthur Conan Doyle yarns that he performed onstage more than 1,300 times over a span of 30 years.

From the beginning, Ludwig messes with us. We seem to be watching the climax of a classic Sherlock manhunt, but we're actually watching the end of a Gillette performance — and the violent crime occurs while he and the cast are taking their bows. So, we adjourn to Gillette Castle on the Connecticut River, where William indulges his impulse to sleuth in real life, inviting all the suspects to a Christmas soiree.

We quickly learn the actor has grown fabulously wealthy, giving free rein to his eccentricity. Weapons and gadgets line the walls of his posh parlor: rifles, pistols, axes, a garrote, an intercom and even a taping system run by remote control. Sprung by a false sconce, one of the walls actually revolves!

Pretty nifty for Christmas 1936, when the real Gillette would have been past his 83rd birthday, and rather quixotic for CPCC Theatre to install at panoramic Pease Auditorium. Perhaps, with the aid of unseen ninjas, scenic designer James Duke gets the revolve to work every time, but we must thank the tuxedos, wigs and evening dresses from costume designer Emily McCurdy for helping us to overlook the lack of patrician polish in the decor.

The most outrageous of those wigs are worn by Eleanor Wixson as William's loopy mom, Martha (on loan from Arsenic and Old Lace), and Christine Noah as William's flighty ex-paramour, Aggie. Not so long ago, Aggie married a millionaire who died in a freakish skiing accident. Dressed in deep crimson, not widow's black, the ingenue actress arrives at the Gillette mansion in the company of Simon Bright, who turns out not to be Aggie's escort but — suspiciously soon — her new husband. Also on the guest list are acting couple Felix and Madge Geisel, played by Scott Reynolds and Shawnna Pledger, William's longtime friends and castmates.

Into this cozy coterie, William tosses a wildcard, nasty theater critic Daria Chase, a vicious gossip columnist to boot. The would-be Sherlock has a trick or two up his sleeve, and Daria fits into his scheme in multiple ways. One of her nuggets of gossip may be the key to solving the theater shooting and the subsequent murder of a stagehand. Or, since she professes to be a medium, she may be able to summon the soul of the victim at a seance.

Tasked with William's egotistical flamboyance and Daria's preternatural cattiness, Tony Wright and Lainie Mabbitt have drawn the plumiest roles at Pease, and their performances typify the merits and shortcomings of both the script and the CP production. An adept Shakespearean actor, Wright is exactly what Ludwig requires from his over-the-top protagonist, particularly when he declaims the Bard's pentameters. But the device is way overdone, to the point of conspicuously displacing wit and humor.

On the other hand, Daria brings a welcome profusion of physical comedy to the table — a jumpy and shaky table — and both sides of that revolving wall. Director Tom Hollis, along with Duke and sound designer Jeff Murdock, help to make Daria's seance a lethal delight. But moments of uncertainty punctuate Mabbitt's work, as if she often had to be reassured during rehearsals that, yes, she should go that far with the critic's flakiness. Mabbitt may also be afflicted with critical intelligence when she gets to Daria's last paroxysms in Act 2. Ludwig ignores another STOP sign there.

Nathan Scott seems far more ill-at-ease as Simon in his CP debut, and he's probably too soft-spoken for those seated at the rear of the house, but everyone else in the cast appears blithely convinced that they're working with wondrous material. Wixson has us turned around as often as her son, wielding teacups and daggers in Mother Gillette's dotage, and Noah keeps us confused with Aggie's gushy capriciousness. Would the Geisels plot to kill off their old friend? Reynolds and Pledger exude a Nick-and-Nora elegance that says it's impossible, even when they're quarreling.

As a storm rages outside, the lights fail and the phone goes on the blink, you might get a fatalistic hint of Ten Little Indians in the air. Sure enough, Amy Laughter bustles onto the scene as Inspector Goring to investigate the fresh murder on the premises. She is exactly what Miss Marple would be if Agatha Christie had allowed her to come out of the closet. A sweet touch.

Citizens of the Universe engaged in some hamming and sleuthing of their own last week with A Disturbance in Whitechapel, a comedic desecration of the Jack the Ripper murders by NoDa guerilla-at-large James Cartee. Featuring a timorous Victorian civic booster and a stodgy police commissioner, the bumbling Whitechapel investigation dragged us across several NoDa landmarks, including the Smelly Cat, Growlers and the intersection of North Davidson and 36th. Beggars and butchered harlots dotted our paths.

There was plenty of improv all evening long as actors interacted with audience, guiding us along our twisty path. Because of the Halloween cloudburst last Friday, the final scene couldn't be staged out behind The Rat's Nest. So I think the fiend was unmasked indoors at Jack Beagle's (NoDa 101). What I know for sure is that the culprit was decided at UpStage, where the action began. Little did we know, as we ate our pre-show dinners, that five prime suspects in the cast were playing poker right before our eyes to determine who the killer would be. Yep, there were five different endings to this mystery.

TV Funhouse!

1984

 
Getting to watch Big Brother
By Perry Tannenbaum

In a recent New Yorker piece on the democratizing effect of paperback novels on the American book industry and our reading habits, the steamy cover of George Orwell's 1984 serves as the poster child for the whole phenomenon. Books were set loose from the confines of mail-order book clubs and scarce, far-flung bookstores, free to roam — and be picked up cheaply, on impulse — at newsstands, drug stores, lunch counters, and train stations. Luring customers, publishers blurred the lines between the pulps and the classics on their book covers, employing the same hacks (I mean, artists) to illustrate both.

After I had read 1984, Orwell wasn't perched on top of my list of great romance writers or of fine craftsmen chronicling sexual activity. So at a distance of a half century, I'm hard-pressed to recall what force was stronger in keeping my keen interest as I turned the pages: The romance between Winston Smith and Julia, oppressed under the rule of Big Brother, or Orwell's acute observations on the machinations of totalitarian regimes. At that same distance, it isn't difficult at all to tell you which of those components I remember most vividly.

Julia's name and existence had long faded from my memory when Citizens of the Universe opened 1984 last week at a promising new theater space that's carved, guerilla style, into the vast warehouse at 200 E. 36th Street. You enter through a welcoming little lobby, and the performing space is like a curtained-off area at a convention center with an iconic telescreen embedded in the middle of the upstage curtain. Seating is more unique, with a regal platform behind a few rows of chairs, where sightlines are presumably better than they would be at floor level. Central heating, however, is a work-in-progress.

The stage adaptation by Wilton E. Hall Jr., Robert Owens, and William A Miles Jr. revived my memories of Julia, the wily O'Brien, and the brainy, pedantic Syme, all of whom toil at the Ministry of Love in the one-time future world of Oceania. We get a good taste of the office politics and the forbidden romance that propel the storyline of 1984 forward, but there's proportionally more emphasis on Orwell's brilliant political analysis — cynical totalitarian slogans such as "War Is Peace" and his enduring coinages, including newspeak, doublethink, and Big Brother himself. MS Word's spellcheck dares not correct any of these.

COTU's production can be faulted for the dullish acting and directing that crops up occasionally — and for the refrigerated ambiance that enfolds it — but the force of Orwell's vision is unscathed. It may be erroneous to suggest that Brian Willard has more than one variety of gravitas at his command, and romance with Julia might spark more convincingly if Kristin Varnell had drawn a more responsive partner. Director Michael Anderson doesn't help matters with some pointless blocking. Nor does he crack the whip on behalf of energy often enough.

Perhaps Anderson's operating theory is that Big Brother's rule has robotized even ruling party workers such as Winston, who works diligently at rewriting his nation's history until doubts arise — and Julia makes her audacious advances. Maybe there's a tranquilizer infused into the "Victory" coffee that Winston and his co-workers must drink, causing his torpor.

Whatever Willard's shortcomings may be on the receiving end of Varnell's romantic overtures, he's wondrously transformed when the lovers are captured. Willard does fear and horror really well, so the scenes of physical and psychological torture are gripping. Of course, he gets fabulous stimulus from Robert Brafford as O'Brien, a hard-as-steel tormentor with a handsome, villainous smirk. Jesse Boykin Kimmel as the innocent Syme and Kelly Ogden as the persnickety snitch Parsons aren't as powerful, but they're nearly as fine. James Cartee appears as Big Brother — exclusively on telescreen — looking more like the old paperback illustration than anyone else onstage.

In an age awash with facile and jejune dystopias, we can be grateful that COTU has delivered such a meaty and fearsome version of the original. If you haven't read Orwell since you were 15, you might find that he was even more profound and astute than you remembered. I did.

Charlotte's theatre weekend was already numerical enough with 1984 opening at the same time that nuVoices 3 was unfolding at Actor's Theatre of Charlotte.

Add to that the local premiere of 2 Across at UpStage in NoDa — presented by Three Bone Theatre — and the alphabet could be fretting over its adequacy.

Written by Jerry Mayer and subtitled "A Comedy of Crosswords and Romance," 2 Across takes place entirely on a BART train in the San Francisco Bay area — in the wee hours of the morning when a two-hander would be plausible. The script observes the classic unities, designed to play for 82 minutes without an intermission. With Mara Rosenberg and Phil Robertson as the leads under the direction of Rachel Jeffreys, they nearly hit the mark exactly on Sunday night, clocking in at 80:42.

Both Janet and Josh have their newspapers opened to the daily crossword puzzle as they board the train, but Janet is serious about solving each morning's challenge while Josh merely dabbles and gives up. Janet is on her way back home from an explosive airport farewell with her son, who is leaving against her wishes to join the Marines, while Josh is on his way to an interview with Banana Republic after quitting his father's button business.

Josh gets more than he bargains for when he asks for help and hints with the puzzle. Not only does Janet frown upon cheating and shortcuts, she believes that crosswords are a template for life: if you ponder the clues closely, persevere, and complete your puzzle, you will succeed. If Josh completes today's puzzle before the train arrives at its final stop, Janet assures him that he will nail the Banana Republic job.

For his part, Josh is not above meddling in Janet's life, which is strictly circumscribed by the rules. She won't accept Josh's offer of a sandwich because of the sign posted against eating at the rear of the empty car, and she bristles at the very thought of keeping the library book in her purse past its due date, even when Josh offers her a dollar for the fines. Both of the commuters bend during the trip, Josh agreeing to finish the puzzle if he can rendezvous with Janet after the interview to share the result. Meanwhile, Janet loosens up enough to break a rule or two. You will not only see her eat; she will also drink!

Robertson loudly plays the loose cannon, somewhat pushy but not too much for a mid-lifer who shuns commitment. He's aware that his approach to life hasn't worked, but it probably would take someone like Janet to make him do something about it. Rosenberg is more than sufficiently prim and prissy as Janet, with a wider gulf to cross because she has successfully deluded herself into thinking that she has always chosen the right path — and burned her bridges when she hasn't. An attractive, interested, and helpful man plus a couple of drinks might be necessary to steer her around toward enlightenment, so Rosenberg's initial starchiness eventually yields dividends.

I wasn't totally satisfied with the way that Mayer handles the touchy matter of his protagonists' marriages, but Robertson and Rosenberg deliver the warmth and simple wisdom of his script so naturally that I was able to cut the playwright some slack. Mayer's humor is another key selling point.

GONZO: Fear & Loathing

Durang v. Ives

April 2015

The Rocky Horror Show

May 2015

Theater reviews: Pippin & The Rocky Horror Show
Charlemagne & Son Under the Big Top

By Perry TannenbaumTheater

Looking back at my review of the 2013 Broadway revival of Pippin, I'm amazed that I could have predicted that the touring version might be better. Nailed it! The Roger O. Hirson book for this early Stephen Schwartz musical has always been rather flimsy and derivative, basically the fables of Candide and The Fantasticks loosely transported to the Age of Charlemagne. But director Diane Paulus had a brilliant idea: keep the famed Bob Fosse-style choreography, substituting circus and magical spectacle for the original vaudeville style.

Trouble was, Matthew James Thomas was such a bland Pippin that he was terribly upstaged by everyone around him — Broadway power couple Terrence Mann and Charlotte d'Amboise as his royal parents, a Tony Award winning performance by Patina Miller as our emcee, another Tony winner by Andrea Martin as his grandma, and the bodacious circus performers from Les 7 doigts de la main. Yet my optimism about the touring version at Belk Theater took a gut punch when I opened my playbill and discovered that understudy Lisa Karlin would be replacing Sasha Allen in the Miller role as the Leading Player.

As it turned out, Karlin was pretty damn good, with a strong voice, jazzy Fosse movement, and a fraction of Miller's style and charisma. Further narrowing the imbalance between the emcee and Charlemagne's eternally questing son was the energy and verve that Kyle Dean Massey brought to Pippin. Suddenly our hero's songs — "Corner of the Sky," "With You," and "Morning Glow" — weren't medieval trials by ordeal.

Though Sabrina Harper isn't memorable as Charlemagne's conniving Queen Fastrada, John Rubinstein steers the emperor in a radically different direction from Mann's take on Broadway. Mann's bellicosity was funny because it was outsized and overdone (and mixed with some juggling). Rubinstein, the original Pippin on Broadway in 1972, is funny because his tyrannical barbarism emanates from such a frail and elderly frame.

With Adrienne Barbeau as the wise granny Berthe, the tour does boast some star power if your memory stretches back to her glory days on Maude, a TV sitcom that also premiered in 1972. Her acrobatic exploits didn't look as incongruous as Martin's did, though it turns out Barbeau is actually older, but I was happier with the way she led the saccharine "No Time at All" singalong.

The able acrobats sashay across the stage with quaint placards to mark Pippin's various stages in his quest for self-fulfillment — his forays into politics, warfare, creativity, and domesticity — so the vaudeville aspect of Schwartz's original vision isn't altogether discarded. Set design by Scott Pask and costumes by Dominique Lemieux turn the circus ambiance of Pippin into a dream big top. At the end, when Pippin runs out of ambitions and quests, you'll be glad to see that the dream lives on.

In their first stab at a musical, Citizens of the Universe discovered a cruel truth on opening night of The Rocky Horror Show at 100 Gardens on 36th Street. They need better equipment — and maybe better singers. At an opening night that sounded more like a tentative tech rehearsal, body mics buzzed, blared, or only worked intermittently. In his local debut as Rocky, for example, Zeke Jones was rarely heard above the pre-recorded accompaniment.

As the innocent couple that walk into a spooky household of sexually rapacious aliens, Bryan Green and Becca Whitesmith have a certain awkward charm as Brad and Janet. But previous Janets that I've heard had the ability to carry a tune. Whitesmith may be as tone-deaf as she sounded on Wednesday, or she may just have been finding it difficult to hear and sing with the canned accompaniment.

Costumes by Darcy Russell, choreography by Shannon Wightman-Girard, and makeup — plenty of it — by Mandy Kendall all bring plenty of fun to the evening. Fen Temple was a sight to behold, greeting the betrothed couple as Riff-Raff and sustaining a fine creepiness in the face of frequent sound dropouts. More fortunate in her miking was Kitty Beard, looking even more outré as the evil genius-dominatrix of the aliens, Frank 'N' Furter, who creates Rocky and sexually initiates both the lovebirds. Beard powered through the dropouts and left no doubt how striking Frank will be when technical difficulties are overcome.

As the wheelchair-bound Doctor Scott, James Cartee left nothing to chance, disdaining a microphone and bellowing the Doc's Germanic accent at fairly high decibels. There will be plenty to admire in Rose Avalon's stage direction if this Rocky ever achieves reasonable audibility. The silhouetted deflowering scenes work pretty successfully with Temple's set design, a reminder that lighting equipment isn't as temperamental as audio.

If COTU manages to solve their audio woes, perhaps they'll begin to draw more fervid, dedicated, and orthodox Rocky crowds. Little baggies are handed out as you enter, filled with the cards, newspaper, noisemakers, and oversized eyeglass frames that devotees might expect. Most of the folks at 100 Gardens on Wednesday night had little more idea what to do with these things than I did.

The Lion In Winter

July 2015

The Lion in Winter approaches from the comedic angle
Christmas with the barbarians

By Perry Tannenbaum

After watching the wrangling and intriguing of King Henry II, striving to bend his competing heirs and rival queens to his will, people are unlikely to think of The Lion in Winter as anything but a drama — particularly when his chief adversary is the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine. Energies and passions between family members, including the visiting King Philip II of France (Queen Eleanor's stepson) are as complex and fissionable as any drama written since Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos. Yet James Cartee, who directs the production now running at Seeds on 36th Street, is reaffirming that he isn't ordinary people. The self-proclaimed Intergalactic Peacekeeper — and founder — of Citizens of the Universe sees the script as a comedy.

That's a tough sell when we reach the summit of the English king's towering rages, but Cartee does have a point. Aspects of the plotline are certainly viewable through a sitcom lens — though you'll readily distinguish the strife between Henry and Eleanor from the squabbles that enlivened The Honeymooners — and playwright James Goldman sprinkles some unmistakable zingers along the way. Of course, the absolute topper, Eleanor's "It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" winks right through the fourth wall.

While the scale and seriousness of the issues between Mr. and Mrs. Plantagenet dwarf those between the Kramdens, the chemistry is curiously similar: Henry blusters, brags and hotly rages; Eleanor coolly deflates. Further narrowing the gap is the setting. For those of you who haven't explored Seeds on 36th, it's a far cry from Henry's castle in Chinon (southeast of Paris), where the king is spending the holidays, furloughing Eleanor from prison as a Christmas gift.

Succession to Henry's kingdom is the key issue here, since he's not inclined to go the Lear route and split it in three. Eleanor wants the crown to go to her dear Richard the Lionheart, the eldest and most valorous of the sons, while Henry wants it to go to his youngest and favorite son, Prince John, a teenager who is conspicuously weak-willed and weak-minded. The middle son, Geoffrey, has signed on to be John's chancellor and advisor so long as Henry holds the upper hand. When the winds start to shift, Geoffrey will cut a deal with anyone.

Short-term, Henry holds sway. The crown will pass to whomever he chooses. But long-term, Richard figures to snatch the crown whether or not his mummy lives to see the day — unless dad subverts the natural right-makes-right calculus by putting sonny to death.

But why must any of this be decided now as the royals decorate the Yuletide tree? Well, the visiting King Philip is insisting that after a long, long time of vacillating, Henry should make up his mind about his sister Alais, betrothed at the age of 8 to be the queen of England as part of a barbarically civilized territorial swap that netted Henry the Vexin, whatever that was, to go along with the Aquitaine. Unless Henry fulfills the terms of his 15-year-old agreement with France, marrying his 23-year-old mistress or handing her off to England's future king, Philip wants his Vexin back. More than his sister.

So besides the short- and long-term considerations, lust is bumping up against politics. Outside Henry's castle in France — notwithstanding the fact that we're at Seeds on 36th — we're to imagine that King Philip has an army that could conceivably tip the balance of power toward a spurned English heir. So there are many plots and treacheries to be discussed, including a possible junket to Rome, where the Pope might deign to annul the holy matrimony between Henry and Eleanor.

Above all, these Plantagenets delight in hurting one another, so their humor is salted with malice. Late in the game, Philip proves that he also has the knack. Even Alais, so lamblike at the outset, sprouts some fangs toward the end.

As much as we need a Christmas tree on this set to make it imaginable for Henry to bring up the Pope in conversation, we desperately need Deana Pendragon's richly evocative costumes to help us believe these royals are who they say they are — and not some cruelly twisted distortion of Married With Children. The regal trappings are especially helpful in maintaining the gravitas of Tom Ollis as he dives headlong into the tirades of Henry, but you'll also find that Prince John's dopey pageboy costume gives Robert Brafford extra comical dimensions to play with.

We can admire Brafford for just appearing onstage with that ludicrous dress, let alone simpering, pouting, and flopping in it so zestfully. Cartee’s courage is subtler, casting Dean Messer as King Philip. Instead of a man attempting to combine elegance and effeteness in a callow king, we get a transgendered person merely acting more manly and allowing the golden costume to do the rest. There’s more to Messer’s performance than just that, of course, but the ease of it makes you wonder why Cartee’s crossover casting choice is so rare.

Brafford as John, Michael Anderson as Geoffrey, and Shane Brayton as Richard are probably the least brotherly trio I've seen as Henry's sons, not a bad thing as they plot and connive against one another. Watching Brafford skipping merrily around the stage when, in spite of his cowardice and brainlessness, he seems to be back on top of the heap would be less comical if Anderson's coldness and Brayton's arrogance hadn't already made Geoffrey and Richard such unsavory alternatives.

One by one, they parade into Philip's boudoir in the first of two climactic scenes, each one bent on ruthlessly cutting out the other two. Yet with all the hiding behind curtains, it does play out like farce. With the heart and humanity drained out of the siblings' conflict, it's almost impossible for Ollis to break our hearts — as Peter O'Toole did in the 1968 film adaptation of this 1966 drama — when he realizes he has lost all his boys.

All the heart in this production channels instead into the love triangle, and there is plenty of it. I found it easy to wish Alais happiness with Henry because Mandy Kendall makes her so unequivocal in her love and admiration for Henry, old as he may be, and in her detestation of the brothers. Yet she is schooled by the brothers over the course of the holidays, learning that she'll need to stand up for herself to survive their plotting, and this newfound spine ultimately makes her dearer to Henry.

The excellence of Ollis and Meredith McBride as man and wife isn't limited to their love-hate marital relationship or the vicious glee they take in wounding each other. Sharing a tempest-tossed history, they're just as convincing in their camaraderie as suffering, disappointed parents.

Ollis is bearish, loud, and — thanks to the necessity of turning off the air conditioning system during the performance — sweaty in in his kingly vulgarity, restlessly prowling his lair in search of a satisfying legacy. Yet it's McBride who is the most majestic as Eleanor, cool and witty with her rejoinders and scorching in her bitterness. Watching her is like seeing one of those imposing portraits in the National Gallery come to life, still slightly two-dimensional as she advances toward us, yet unmistakably immortal as she shoots her barbs.The Lion in Winter approaches from the comedic angle
Christmas with the barbarians

Beowulf

July 2015

Beowulf fights monsters at Spirit Square

BY DON BOEKELHEIDE

The improbable voyage of “Beowulf” to Spirit Square started two months ago at Tommy’s Pub, the popular bar on Central Avenue now scheduled for demolition.

“Beowulf” now is being performed at the Spirit Square’s Duke Energy Theater.

Beginning in April, Megan Sky, the organizer, director and co-writer, started holding meetings at Tommy’s to talk about the show. A youthful bundle of red-haired energy, Sky wanted create an original theater piece based on the 1,000-year-old Anglo-Saxon epic poem.

With James Cartee of Charlotte’s improvisational theater company Citizens of the Universe, Sky recruited a “Beowulf” group. Perched on bar stools along Tommy’s beer-stained counter, the group decided to stick close to the original: The hero Beowulf faces and defeats the monster Grendel, kills Grendel’s even more ferocious mother and finally meets his doom slaying a fire-breathing dragon.

Sky stuck with Tommy’s for the auditions, using a dingy little room off the bar. Much of “Beowulf” takes place in a mead hall – more or less a Medieval version of Tommy’s – with Vikings replacing bikers and honey wine in place of Coors Light.

For rehearsals, the production moved from Tommy’s to the former Carolina Actors Studio Theater space in NoDa. With help from the cast, Sky and Cartee continued to rewrite the play.

Zannah Kimbrel, a graduate student in UNC Charlotte’s Religious Studies Department, plays Grendel.

“Grendel was read in the original as a vicious monster, but we have chosen to look at it as a representation of indigenous peoples who were destroyed or forced to assimilate at the hands of conquering forces.” Kimbrel said. “Grendel and its mother are representative of an ancient, earthly force, and can be seen as feminine, in opposition to the ‘civilized,’ masculine warriors who have come to subjugate it.”

Only days before the first performance, Sky and company finally gained access to Spirit Square.

“This is a great space, but it is tricky.” Sky said. “We are more used to performing in found spaces. To be in a ‘real’ theater with real equipment and lighting is a huge advantage, but there are all kinds of rules here.”

“Beowulf” is a timeless story with lasting influence: “The Hobbit” borrowed from Beowulf, as did “Harry Potter.”

Citizens’ and Sky’s local version is approachable, owing much to improvisational and street-theater technique.

And, in a city where developers routinely destroy unruly but creative spaces such as Tommy’s, it may be especially worthwhile, as Robin Bates suggests, to look again to the ancient story of Beowulf for lessons in balance and heroism.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/community/city-news/article27313672.html#storylink=cpy

Monster Mash in the Q.C.
Wolfman gets kicked off the kick line

By Perry Tannenbaum

Monsters were on the loose across the Queen City over the weekend, ravishing women in Transylvania, slaughtering warriors in Denmark and sparking panic among their peoples. Fortunately, Mel Brooks and an anonymous 11th Century poet have provided heroes to combat these scourges, making it safe for the rest of us mere mortals to venture into Halton Theater on the CPCC campus and Duke Energy Theatre at Spirit Square.

Although Mary Shelley housed the horrific experiments of Victor Frankenstein in the German Rhineland, where the storied Frankenstein Castle still stands, Brooks seems to have moved Young Frankenstein to Transylvania so that Dracula can make a cameo appearance. An additional move to 1934 enabled Brooks and Gene Wilder, who co-wrote the 1974 screenplay and snatched the title role, to slice and dice the storyline and add new characters, most notably Victor's Americanized grandson, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, who is mightily ashamed of his family's heritage.

The musical version, which toured here in 2011, remains nearly 20 minutes longer in CPCC Summer Theatre's premiere than the film. Brooks' original score adds a cluster of loony tunes to the notable musical moments we relish on screen, namely Peter Boyle's catatonic "Puttin' on the Ritz" and Madeline Kahn's ecstatic "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life." All the best shticks are lovingly preserved: the horses' neighing at the very mention of Frau Blucher, the mechanical Nazi constable, Igor's shifting hump and Elizabeth's post-coital Bride of Frankenstein hairdo.

Brooks proved surprisingly adept at manipulating the medium when he musicalized The Producers, his biggest Broadway hit, and he's best here when he builds upon the juiciest movie bits. Fredrick's rapture at the wonders of "The Brain" reaches glitzy proportions, the Blind Hermit's horrendous hospitality toward The Monster gets a schmaltzy vaudeville prelude, and Elizabeth's ecstasy blossoms into an extra song outburst, "Deep Love" — so good that The Monster reprises it.

"Together Again," "Roll in the Hay," "Join the Family Business" and "He Vas My Boyfriend" all spark intermittently as Igor, Inga, Victor and Frau Blucher take turns luring Fredrick into replicating Victor's mad experiments. But the two songs accorded Inspector Kemp wear out the Prussian's welcome, and Elizabeth's derivative "Please Don't Touch Me" is an outright clunker when we've hardly begun. Nor does it help that Elizabeth's frigidity, bidding her fiance Frederick adieu, is embroidered with a vast ensemble of dancing couples who never touch each other.

Under the direction of Tom Hollis, the young CP cast throws caution to the winds navigating this uneven show. As a result, this new production often surpasses the touring version, particularly when choreographer Ron Chisholm is set loose on the climactic "Puttin' on the Ritz." Of course The Monster can become a tap-dancing whiz in three easy lessons! When the ensemble reaches full intensity, Wolfman appears out of nowhere and tries to break into the kick line, but The Monster tosses him out with a growl. If that happened on the tour, it wasn't nearly as funny.

Looking strapped for cash in recent seasons, CP's scenic and technical budgets seem to be sitting pretty this year, with set designer Jennifer O'Kelly's exploits — teaming with tech director Don Ketchum — surpassing her fine work on Boeing Boeing. Steve Gamble not only comes close to completely taming Halton's notorious sound system, he starts punctuating the presentation with thunder before Hollis delivers his curtain spiel. Lighting designer Gary Spivak is also champing at the mock horror bit, shining plentiful bursts of lightning on the curtain even before it rises.

Nor are we let down when the curtain goes up. The lecture hall is passable with its glowing-brain centerpiece, but it's the spooky laboratory where O'Kelly takes fullest advantage of the Halton's height, flying The Monster high above at the galvanic moment of his creation — on a massive slab hoisted by four thick chains. And yes, Fredrick and Inga take that same breathtaking ride when they couple.

If you saw Matthew Blake Johnson and Ashtyn Hutchings as the leads in Anything Goes earlier this summer, you'll need no further urging to come see them now. Adding a pair of mildly nerdy eyeglasses as Fredrick, Johnson excels at the nerdy comedy of "The Brain." Playing opposite a worthier love object in Hutchings, he also gets better chances to click in romantic comedy. In scantier costumes and a blond-bombshell wig, Hutchings as Inga isn't the sophisticate Reno Sweeney was — the same can be about Brooks vis-a-vis Cole Porter — but she's pleasingly seductive in "Roll in the Hay" and "Listen to Your Heart."

Ashton Guthrie does the heavy comedy lifting again as the creepy, humpbacked, incompetent Igor. Jacob Estes and Kelly Kohlman, previously paired as Moonface Martin and Bonnie Le Tour, also return as The Monster and Frau Blucher. Estes makes the most of his chance to hoof it in top hat and tux while Kohlman still seems to be ruminating about how best to project Blucher's dyspepsia. Until "Deep Love," I was on the verge of liking Kylee Verhoff as Elizabeth. She comes reasonably close on that showstopper.

No such problems with Rob Addison. You have to go back to the beginning of the CP's summer season to recall Addison's excellence as Fagin in Oliver! Here he serves his time as Inspector Kemp before returning to his full glory as the Hermit. Jolson himself would likely crack up seeing Addison on his knees earnestly begging for "Someone."

Citizens of the Universe has written an entirely new stage version of Beowulf, and the manner in which it was stitched together could easily be a modern Frankenstein story in itself. Of course, there's the thousand-year-old poem in what sounds like a non-alliterated translation. Layered on are the rampaging monster's inner thoughts, the presence of a poet in King Hrothgar's devastated court, and the monster's protestations that Beowulf's victory was an accident ? telltale signs that COTU may have dipped into Grendel, John Gardner's subversive retelling of the Old English epic from the monster's point of view.

Under the formalistic direction of Megan Sky, we're frequently reminded of theatre's ceremonial roots. Becca A. Whitesmith is our warrior storyteller, doubling as Wiglaf late in Act 2. Chesley Oxendine as the Danes' Shaper chips in with more lore — and multiple toasts — while Jesse Boykin Kimmel presides over the famed Herot mead hall as King Hrothgar. For some occult reason, COTU strips Beowulf of all his boasting when he arrives to save Hrothgar and his subjects, so Jeffrey J. Whiteside's portrayal of the great Geat makes him radically strong and silent until his battle with the dragon. As Warriors in Beowulf's service, Kathy Mullican and Stephen Skarecrow Russell trumpet their master's virtues, remembering a good majority of their lines.

Sporting a blood-red forehead and a large Hebrew-lettered tattoo below her collarbone, Zannah Kimbrel as Grendel is all you would — and wouldn't — expect the hellish spawn of Cain to be. Amy L. Snyder broods restlessly onstage throughout intermission as Grendel's Mother, showing us soon afterwards why you don't want to mess with her.

An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein

August 2015

CA&T Awards II

September 2015

A Disturbance in Whitechapel: The Ripper Returns

September 2015

The Woolgatherer
November 2015

The Woolgatherer
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 3:04 PM
Anyone who has seen William Mastrosimone’s Extremities, either onstage or at the movies, is likely to approach the playwright’s previous 1979 drama, The Woolgatherer, with a certain amount of wariness. For me, the violence that erupted in Extremities when I saw it at UNC Charlotte in 1991 was shocking – and I’m not easily shocked. The new Citizens of the Universe production of that earlier script often seems to be headed down a similar harrowing path as Rose, a painfully shy and paranoid hemophiliac who works at a dime store candy counter, entertains a grubby long-haul trucker named Cliff in her boarded-up South Philly
Obviously, there are echoes of Rocky (1976) in this coupling, with Rose’s counter work and Cliff’s corny jocularity fitting the Adrian & Balboa mold. But Rose’s fragility also seems partly inspired by Laura in The Glass Menagerie. As for the seething aggression that we see churning inside Cliff as Rose neurotically fends off his advances, it seems to be rooted in a deep underclass place, the wild soil of our industrial jungle. Cliff’s restless, predatory instinctiveness in David Pollack’s performance reminded me of the fearsome yet inwardly broken Pale in Lanford Wilson’s Burn This (1987).

Yet the drama does prove to share some crucial DNA with Extremities, for Mastrosimone also toys with the idea that the shrinking Rose is as much a predator as the well-traveled and rugged Cliff. So as the story unfolds, and the balance of power teeters, it’s advisable to forget that Pollack himself is directing this tense two-hander. Aspects of Megan Sky’s manner as Rose may strike you as overly directed or insufficiently spontaneous at first. Her arm folding, her cowed bent-over head, and her sideways movements pulling away from Cliff are the most obvious ways an actress can signal that she’s shy.

Then as the truth emerges in Act 2, you may perceive hints from Sky that rudimentary acting may be Rose’s primary weapon. Buying that will likely raise your estimate of Sky’s performance after the previously fleeced Cliff returns, knocking on Rose’s door in the middle of the night.

No set builder was required to provide this sturdy door, for COTU’s newest production is at the unleased site where Carolina Actors Studio Theatre once stood – the same 2424 N. Davidson St. address previously occupied by Charlotte Rep and NC Dance Theatre. Both of the CAST theater venues have now been liquidated, but COTU is actually using the space where Rep and NCDT had their lobbies, elevated above the floor where performances and rehearsals were previously staged, directly accessible from a doorway facing 28th Street. Folks are manning the old CAST entrance on the side of the parking lot, but we found parking less iffy last Friday out on 28th Street.

It’s a much cozier performing space than any that’s been used by the three previous tenants, raw and ramshackle in the true COTU spirit. This corner of 2424 works especially well with Mastrosimone’s raw, déclassé script. The chemistry between Pollack and Sky frequently shuttles between attraction and repulsion, veering more toward extremes when antagonisms are roused. Whether either of these commitment-averse losers could be redeemed kept me guessing until the emotional denouement.

Nosferatu: A Silent Experience

October 2015

BWW Review: COTU Gives NOSFERATU the Silent Treatment
October 30
6:24 AM
2015

Recent rumblings have reached me hinting that Citizens of the Universe may soon be taking its last lap around the track. As NOSFERATU was opening last week, it was certainly disconcerting to hear that Charlotte's most unique theatre company may soon announce a final season. Yet a possible flame-out is not out of character. Founded just over six years ago, COTU has always personified the restless energy, creativity, and eccentricity of its artistic director, James Cartee.

Hunter Thompson himself would have gasped in astonishment at Cartee's hyper-caffeinated portrait of him in his one-man paranoid fantasia, Gonzo: A Brutal Chrysalis, COTU's signature production. Cartee & Co. ranged from Beowulf to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, from Uncle Vanya to Reservoir Dogs, and from Titus Andronicus to The Princess Bride. No less restless than the range of Cartee's interests is the range of venues he has taken his company to - surely unprecedented in Charlotte theatre history.

The fact that there are no real theaters on Central Avenue or in Plaza-Midwood has never discouraged Cartee. COTU's guerilla invasions have targeted The Graduate, Studio 1212, Snug Harbor, the defunct Story Slam, and a warehouse loading dock on Central Avenue. Cartee's explorations in NoDa have been no less pioneering, including UpStage, the Chop Shop, Seeds 100, and an epic tour of NoDa restaurants, bars, and coffee houses - in pouring rain - chasing down Jack the Ripper. The Beowulf at Duke Energy this past July was an out-of-body experience for COTU followers. We were all in seats you couldn't budge!

No, Cartee hasn't settled in there - or at any other place aside from Story Slam where he could become acclimated to the equipment. So COTU's new NoDa foray, outdoors in the loading area of Salvaged Beauty, the community's "music and art collective," is almost as technically plagued as its maiden voyage into musicals, The Rocky Horror Show, was at Seeds back in May.

But it really doesn't matter that much in NOSFERATU. You wanted to hear what Brad, Janet, and their assorted tormentors were saying and singing in Rocky Horror, but in turning to silent film for the first time, Cartee mostly gives the silent treatment to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's 1922 classic.

Henrik Galeen's screenplay was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with all the names changed and the ending deftly condensed. Cartee's stage adaptation adds a smattering of spoken narrative, but it is not from Thomas Hutter, nee Jonathan Harker in Stoker's novel. Through strings of journal entries and letters home to his dear fiancée, Harker was the purported author of our tourguide to Transylvania.

At Salvaged Beauty, it's Professor Bulwer, the crucifix-swinging Van Helsing in Stoker's original, who occasionally creeps across our field of vision, reading snatches of an eerie narration. Among local actors, JC Kingsley is only eclipsed by Tom Scott and Brett Gentile for the sheer loudness of his voice, so my usual preference for sitting as close as possible to the action - especially for outdoor productions - could be confidently tossed by the wayside.

The more compelling reason to move away from the playing area is the wide vista of the action, which encompasses about half of Salvaged Beauty's considerable depth. While titles flow downwards from the top of a closed garage door at the side of the building, action is usually staged off one of the sides, near front one of the adjoining entrances. Even when I withdrew from the rows of seats at floor level to the platform behind, keeping track of the titles and the action was often like watching a tennis match.

At the macabre ruins of Carolina Theatre, where Cartee originally intended to present his Halloween saturnalia, the whole concept could have worked far more effectively, with titles projected above the action - or below it, if the rickety old stage has been rehabilitated. But the main problem with the titles on opening night was that they were totally out of sync with the action, falling awkwardly behind the dialogue or leaping even more awkwardly ahead. Worst of all, when the titles were allowed to languish too long, catch-up was accomplished at the expense of watching whole chunks of dialogue and connecting narrative scroll by at an impossibly blurry speed.

Mandy Kendall as Hutter's wife, Ellen, takes the brunt of this technical glitch in scene after scene fretting over Thomas's return from Count Orlok's horrid castle and reacting to his bizarre correspondence. As Thomas, Bryan Green hardly needs any supertitles to fortify the purity, idealism, and astounding naïveté of our hero. We can see him absently cutting himself with a knife at Orlok's castle and his host's ravenous response to the sight of blood. Likewise, Thomas's discovery of Orlok in his coffin, his fainting, his comatose days, and his delirium are all visually explicit.

Thanks to the make-up wizardry Kendall, Kingsley, and Cartee, Justin Mulcahy doesn't need to emote extensively to plumb the evil depths of Orlok, nee Count Dracula. Oh, but he does anyway! Joseph Tenney gets a similar pass as Knock, Orlok's man in Hutter's hometown, though there's already a craziness in his eyes worthy of the insect-eating Renfield, Stoker's most oddball creation.

The exhilaration that an unabashed surrender to silent screen hamming can bring us is probably best exemplified by the minor players, all of whom get to dig into multiple roles. Whether warning Thomas of the perils of Orlok's castle, tending to our hero in the hospital, or protecting his hometown against the onset of plague, you can count on Ervin Green, Michelle Lampley, and Mirachol Carroll to inject some levity into the ghoulish story, either as dimwits or incompetents.

Aboard the ghost ship that carries Orlok to his new HQ across the street from the Hutters, the levity comes from an excess of Halloween melodrama by the Captain and the First Mate - or it will when the titles roll properly. The interplay between the Innkeeper and his servant is already slapstick gold.

In fact, once the big tech snafus are solved, all the problems of COTU's NOSFERATU are likely to vanish, except for one: the nagging annoyance of Kingsley's pronunciation of the title. Emphasize and elongate the third syllable and you readily evoke the horror of vampires and the nocturnal fright of Transylvania. Transfer that emphasis to the second syllable, as Kingsley does over and over, and it sounds like we're dealing with some milk company in New Jersey.
http://www.broadwayworld.com/charlotte/article/BWW-Review-COTU-Gives-NOSFERATU-the-Silent-Treatment-

Seascape

Feb 2016

Seascape
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 10:54 AM
Citizens of the Universe hasn’t announced the full details of its farewell season, but it has begun handsomely at “The Shell,” COTU founder James Cartee’s name for the suite on 2424 N. Davidson St. that CAST occupied in its latter days. The theater spaces where CAST often staged two productions at the same time have both been obliterated, stripped down to the original floors and walls, but the residue proves unexpectedly appropriate as a vast, bleak setting for Edward Albee’s Seascape, directed by S. Wilson Lee.
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For awhile, the drama seems to revolve around Nancy and Charlie, a mid-life couple who bicker somewhat lethargically – compared with the titanic battles Albee staged between George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – about what they should do now and in the future. The weak grip this opening had on my attention was further weakened by Kylene T. Edson as Nancy, indistinctly audible when projecting her gripes over across the beach to her husband diagonally downstage. Lee would be advised to either energize Edson during these opening moments or bring her downstage more often.

Luckily, these difficulties evaporate when two ginormous lizards crawl ashore, frightening the humans as they scope them out. Since the sea is upstage, fright not only raises Edson’s energy level, it also drives her naturally toward us where she can be easily heard. Wariness is well-advised, but the lizards, Leslie and Sarah, aren’t foraging for food so much as they are reconnoitering the possibilities of life on land.

Amazingly, Leslie and Sarah speak English, if only the rudimentary kind you would expect from high school freshmen matriculating in Lancaster or Cabarrus County. There’s a lot for Nancy and Charlie to catch the reptiles up on, including the origin of the universe, the primordial soup, evolution, mammals, and the whole concept of emotions, beginning and ending with love. Shuttling between the urge to educate and the impulse to flee in terror, Nancy and Charlie might identify more with teachers in urban school districts.

The spark for this intriguing production comes largely from the extraordinary work Lee elicits from Emmanuel Barbe as Leslie, abetted by the phosphorescent glow of Kenya Davis’s makeup design. I’ve often struggled to penetrate through Barbee’s French accent when he battled against the Bard’s blank verse in Shakespeare Carolina productions. But here he is admirably slowed down by Lee – and often formidably booming. The physicality of him can be menacing enough as he advances toward you, but you really don’t want to broach the possibility that his species might lose their mighty tails during the next billion or so years of evolution. He’s attached to that tail.

By comparison, Brianna Merkel is a cute counterpart for Barbe as Sarah, as adorably clueless when she doesn’t understand concepts – matrimony, pregnancy, the list goes on – as Leslie is frustrated and antagonistic. We see a certain bond forming between Sarah and Nancy, peacemakers trying to calm their mates’ warrior instincts, and it’s here that Edson’s performance begins to blossom.

Brian Amidai is more consistently reliable as Charlie, very adept at the inertia of a husband who doesn’t wish to travel or repeat past adventures. He’s on a beach and just wants to relax, dammit, maybe get lost in a book. But Amidai’s transition between this beach potato and an instinctual protector rings viscerally true, and there’s a faint layer of comedy in the moments when he thinks he’s gone insane or died. Obliquely, I found him cuing my own reactions as this wild, mysterious fantasy unfolded.

GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis

March 2016

O'Brother

2016

Theater review: COTU's O Brother
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 2:01 PM
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 Mississippi governor 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.Theater review: COTU's O Brother
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 2:01 PM
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 Mississippi governor 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.

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

2017

BWW Review: COTU Hits the Road With a Mind-Boggling HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE
by Perry Tannenbaum Feb. 3, 2017

Can this really be the end? Citizens of the Universe and its indefatigable intergalactic peacekeeper, James Cartee, are leaving Charlotte, heading for Texas, and only possibly leaving an appendage behind them to carry on their mission. Closing with THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY at the Unknown Brewing Company, their most lavish production since they adapted The Princess Bride at the now-defunct Breakfast Club in 2011, COTU is going out with a big bang.

Two parallel events trigger the sci-fi comedy as we meet the shambling, stiff-necked Arthur Dent, who never sheds his PJs and bathrobe throughout his mind-boggling travels. On the earthly plane, Arthur is battling to keep his Cottington home from demolition by the county to provide a pulverized right-of-way for a new thruway. He's ready to lay down his life for his property, and he's actually lying down in front of his Cottington cottage so that the county bulldozer can't move further.

Meanwhile, on a more galactic plane, Vogon overlords who are constructing a hyperspace bypass have slated Earth for demolition. Why a perpetually moving planet in a perpetually expanding universe would be slated for demolition is beside the point, do you hear me?

By the most improbable coincidence, Arthur is singled out for rescue by Ford Prefect, an embedded alien who contributes to the Hitchhiker's Guide as a roving travel writer. Yes, when Douglas Adams first conceived his sci-fi serial for BBC Radio in 1978, ebooks were already on his imaginary assembly line. Arthur frequently consults his pocket reader after hitchhiking aboard a new space cruise or during his downtime, but it is Mandy Kendall who brings The Book to life between stints as our narrator.

She's also, as our costume designer, the person who makes COTU's valedictory so outré sensational. Arthur May be a humdrum everyman, with Chris Freeman faithfully executing his shambling duties, but Tom Ollis and Billy Whalen, tethered together as two-headed galaxy prez Zaphod Beeblebrox, take us back past the disco '70s to the hippy '60s with their outfit. Loud colors, a florid headband, with brash tie-dyes clashing unapologetically against paisleys.

Of course, Beeblebrox doesn't exhaust the weird phenomena Kendall must costume on Arthur's odyssey. Other cameos range from Ravenous Bugbladder Beast of Traal (Greg Irwin), Marvin the morose robot (David G. Holland), Deep Thought the computer (Martin Barry), a Whale (Kevin Sario) swimming with a Bowl of Petunias, and the two life forms on our planet that are smarter than we are, mice and dolphins.

Freeman maintains a British diffidence that occasionally flares into puzzlement amid his haywire journeying, but Nathan Morris as Ford is the optimistic huckster forever urging Arthur onwards, almost oozing insincerity when the going gets tough. Like the brainy Trillian and the gregarious Book, Ford is occasionally incomprehensible when he uses jargon that is outside the ken of the BBC and the OED.

Both Ford and Kendall occasionally stumbled on their lines Saturday night when they wandered through this alien corn, less like the terminology of a botany catalogue than the brainchildren of Lewis Carroll. By comparison, Elisha Bryant skates through these lingual brambles effortlessly as the other earthling in our story, not merely assimilating into the galactic hierarchy after being kidnapped by Beeblebrox, but becoming his/its/their right-hand organism.

If you saw Bryant's work recently in two of the plays at Children's Theatre's WonderFest, including the title role in The Commedia Snow White, her excellence at the Unknown Brewing Company will come as no surprise. Every time Bryant appears, it's in a different costume. Trillian is adequate reason for Arthur to keep on traipsing across the galaxy.

Aside from their helter-skelter production style or their intriguing choices of classics and film adaptations, COTU is best known for pioneering new venues, going where no other theatre company has presented before. Surrounding the players with a wall of wooden casks and an armada of tall stainless steel brewing tanks, the Unknown was surprisingly apt for a sci-fi comedy.

Yes, the sound seal between the brewing room and the bustling taproom wasn't perfect as the evening ripened, and the makeshift seating wasn't cushy enough to prevent the onset of butt burnout at the end of the show. But you can settle into the general seating with your brewski in hand, and there was a convenient food truck parked outside last Saturday night on the corner of S. Mint and Lincoln Streets. I can vouch for the blackened salmon sandwich that I took into the theater, but once the lights went down, I couldn't accurately describe all its green and crunchy contents.

Getting the answer to the meaning of life from Deep Thought is a profound reason for going, so I won't be a spoiler. But the anthem near the close of Act 2 is such an emblematic goodbye that I can't resist. After sitting behind the control board for most of the night, cuing projections that I suspect he devised and overseeing the excellent sound, Cartee strode forward to the stage and joined the action - as a dolphin. Somehow in time-honored comic book style, Adams had brought us back to Earth just before the wily dolphins threw off their domesticated disguises and fled the planet.

"So long," they sang in a joyous, rudimentary production number, "and thanks for all the fish!" Goodbye to you, too, COTU. Thanks for sticking with it so long through so many challenges and hardships.

Here's some more COTU mentions!

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Not a COTU review, but I thought to add it.

Future unclear for Story Slam
By Perry Tannenbaum

The scene at 1401 Central Ave. lacks its usual bustle. Charlotte's prince of gels, Eric Winkenwerder, has hauled away all the lighting equipment from the Story Slam Arts Center. Jimmy Cartee, the gonzo leader of the guerilla Citizens of the Universe theater company, has been carting off the stage, the set for an upcoming production, and sundry Slam viscera in his trusty pickup truck and distributing them to various holding sites around town. "Yeah, it looks so sad here now," says Bob Nulf, the stalwart spokesman for Slam's administrative team. "What we've seen as the new theater district in Charlotte seems to have a cold, and I hope it's not the plague." When Slam couldn't meet its monthly rent — $3,000 for its lobby, makeshift theater, and suite of offices in Plaza Midwood — property owners John Rudolph and Herman Moore gave the occupants 30 days to vacate. There are no hard feelings on either side (Rudolph and Moore are, in fact, fans of the enterprise) and plenty of pride in the variety of artistic activities that have slammed into the 1401 storefront: theater, music, readings, rehearsals, and the inimitable Dr. Sketchy, a wild gumbo of art studio and burlesque. The place has been humming for 15 straight months, every week and every weekend. In theater alone, the output has included Cartee's COTU (ranging from Uncle Vanya to Trainspotting), workshops by the esteemed Machine Theatre, and the astonishing PlayPlay for toddlers, which leapt from Central Avenue to Spirit Square with a jubilant Wee last month. Slam's shutdown occurs six weeks before COTU's A Quiet Evening With Sid and Nancy is scheduled to open for Valentine's Day.
Nulf still hopes that will happen. In fact, he and Mark Woods — founder of NC Shakespeare, former producing director at Charlotte Rep, and Slam's founder/acknowledged Vision Keeper — are vowing that Story Slam has more life in it. If not at 1401 Central, then somewhere else.
"From my perspective," Woods insists, "we only have one choice, and that is to continue. I've said from the very beginning, in front of every audience I've been in front of, 'We don't know what we're doing.' Six months into the process, it became pretty clear to us what we're supposed to do."
He brought a cartload of playscripts and movie scripts from his New River Dramatists project up in Healing Springs to the table and invited the Charlotte arts community to make Story Slam their front porch. The results have been amazing — even to Woods, who labels Slam one of the most extraordinary wake-up calls of his life. "It never occurred to me that there were so many people out there with so many great ideas and so much passion for their ideas," Woods marvels. "I didn't know! The kind of people we've had the joy and the thrill to participate with on this journey, put them in a room together, shake it all up with PlayPlay — I'm telling you, man, it rains gold. It's a beautiful thing, and that's what we should be doing."
So Woods and Nulf, who came here back in the late '80s to be development director at Spirit Square and helped raise $1.3 million for its renovation, are rolling up their sleeves. Bringing together bankers, real estate people, architects, arts patrons and developers who can have the conversation that can put Slam on a solid footing. Top priority for Woods and Nulf, at 1401 or at a new site, is more space. In its current 2,000-square-foot configuration, fire marshals will only allow 49 people — including the performers. That cannot generate sufficient income to pay the rent, the actors and the gas company. Blueprints have been drawn that bring down the walls at 1401 and increase seating to the 200-225 range. But again, there are other Plaza Midwood commercial sites that may be riper plums — or yield a riper deal.
"There are plenty of people out there," Woods affirms, "including John and Herman, who, under the right circumstances, might be able to make the big dream come true."