CITIZENS OF THE UNIVERSE!!!

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)

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.

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

Deleted Scene

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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

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

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