A Tarantino film on stage 

Chip Decker, Brett Gentile, and Dave Blamy are all hard at work on The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the brash and bloody comedy that will launch Actor's Theatre of Charlotte's 20th anniversary season. Normally, there's a wide gulf between Decker and Gentile, both certifiably insane, and the stolid, wholesome Blamy. I mean Blamy portrayed Otto Frank onstage earlier this year -- it doesn't get more serious or grounded than that.

But the borderline had begun to blur by the time the three guys huddled around a speakerphone and discussed Inishmore with me on Aug. 1. Multiple rehearsals spent suspended upside-down had obviously taken their toll on Blamy, who began to show symptoms of silliness during our conversation.

Here's a slightly edited transcript.

Creative Loafing: What has it been like to decide on this play and execute it?

Chip Decker: Well, we love Martin McDonough, and we love his writing. His theatric poetry, to read it and perform it, as evidenced in Cripple of Inishmaan, Pillowman -- it's just brilliant. I don't know whether you've gotten a chance to see his movie, Perry, In Bruges.

No.

Decker: Oh, it's wonderful. Rent it when you can. He wrote it and directed it. It's his first foray into the movie realm. Hopefully, we're not going to lose Martin to the movies, but if he keeps having success like he is, we probably will, unfortunately. He's just a brilliant writer, and a piece like this -- it's just so fricking funny. Pillowman had that nice dark timbre to it. This has that, but it's got so much humor. You catch yourself laughing and going, "Oh, shit! What am I laughing at here? You got to be kidding me! He just blew a cat up!" But in the context of the show, it's just very, very funny.

So it's a great opening piece for us, marvelously written, incredibly gruesome, and just laugh-out-loud, pee-in-your-pants funny.

Is it more political than the works we're familiar with?

Decker: You know what? It's got a message at the end, Perry. It's got a quick wrap up, moral-to-the-story-is, but it's so tongue-in-cheek -- he doesn't belabor it at all. He just comes out and goes, oh by the way, terrorism is stupid. In case you didn't realize it, terrorism sucks. Don't be a terrorist.

If there's a moral to this story, it's that killing people in the name of terrorism is pointless, and that's pretty much the overall theme.

Well, we often look at what are called to "The Troubles" in Ireland, and we think of it as some sort of righteous, religious bigotry enacted by one pious group of Christians on another. It seems to me that perhaps from the beginning, McDonagh is deconstructing that and saying, "Are you kidding!? This is Ireland, where you have a bunch of brutes and drunkards! How can you begin to believe that they have some sort of principled religious conflict up there?"

Decker: You're exactly right. He doesn't cast a good light on anybody. If you're involved in this in one way or another -- and you can apply it to the current administration -- who's the terrorist here? Is it Saddam Hussein or is it George W. Bush? It really doesn't matter who it is, it's all, in the end, pointless. We have death and destruction all around us, and what is the final outcome?

Brett! When are you finally going to break into something that's just a little more bestial? Where does this rank among the repulsive, buffoonish, thuggish things you've done?

Brett Gentile: I've made a good living being an asshole! Every time you do a new project, it becomes the pinnacle of your career, because it's fresh and you're putting all kinds of new stuff to it. To answer your question, it's right up there at the top. I've never had the honor to play a sociopath who didn't have an idea that he was a sociopath, and that's kind of where this guy sits. He has no idea. Zero idea. Everything he does is not only justified and warranted, but needed. So that's kind of an interesting take on it. The violence and the vulgarity just become kind of passe. Characters I've played in the past have been able to step away from themselves and go, "You know what? This is a little fucking crazy." But this guy doesn't do that.

Is there an overlay of difficulty in making this guy Irish?

Gentile: No, I don't think so. This has been one of the easiest reads for me, and the easiest to memorize, just because how brilliant McDonagh is with the guy. He's in very weird situations, but the situations he becomes a part of are nothing obscure for him. So he's rather cool and collected about his life. Of course, there's torment to him -- his cat, which is fucking ridiculous. I think this is going to be fairly straightforward for me. At least I'm trying to keep it simple and straightforward. I'm trying not to get too much into process and stuff like that. The simpler the better I think.

So the accent and the idiom are not making things more difficult.

Gentile: No, I've done three McDonagh shows already, so I'm familiar with the northern dialect. He usually puts all his plays near Inishmore or Galway, which is a similar regionalism in the Irish dialect. Fortunately, I got the training for that when I was in undergraduate and graduate school. So language is secondary right now. Just trying to focus on the meat and potatoes of it, buddy.

Where do you put this in the McDonagh canon among the things that you've done?

Gentile: This is by far the most fucking ridiculous thing that I've ever read of his -- and by ridiculous, I mean brilliant. My favorite is still The Pillowman, just because it has that dark edge to it. But this reminds me of a Tarantino film on stage. Just the gore and the sheer idiocy of these people. Chip kind of nailed it when he said that after all is said and done, everything is kind of pointless. This is by far the most heinous McDonagh role that I've ever even tried to tackle.

I did do The Lonesome West with the two brothers, Valene and Coleman. I played Coleman, who chopped the ears off his brother's dog when they were kids to shut the dog up and then exposes it to him in a paper bag that he keeps in the closet. But that ain't got shit on this.

Dave! How many people had to corner you in order to get you to play this role? Or are you naturally up for being suspended upside down for 12 minutes?

Decker: I just want to include a disclaimer that, during the audition process, I told him what he was in for, and he still came back.

Dave Blamy: When I read this script, I knew I wanted to be a part of it in any way, shape, or form. I didn't care who it was.

Obviously!

Blamy: I'm kind of intrigued by it because this is far and away the most physically demanding thing that I've had to even think about doing -- even though it was possible. That is stretching me, no pun intended. No, I didn't have any reservations about it just because I wanted to be a part of this.

So how far are you along toward being confident that you can actually pull this off?

Blamy: As we speak, I'm probably about three quarters of the way there. We're still working on different riggings and how to get me up and down. But the actual hanging upside down -- Chip provided me with an inversion table, which I've been using daily, and that's helped. It's kind of like training for any marathon or any kind of physical activity you are going to do. You start out slowly and build every day or couple of days, being really aware of your body.

I can't imagine the rehearsal process of all of this.

Decker: We don't have the luxury in this one of me being able to go, "OK, let's stop and talk about this moment." Because Dave is literally -- his head is turning purple, and his eyes are bugging out by that time.

So are you rehearsing it in chunks?

Decker: He'll be suspended today, hopefully, for the full amount of the time. I'm hoping. And basically, we do a lot of talking before we hang him up. Because once he hangs, it's like, go! They can't stop. So we talk about the moments afterwards. It's not like a normal rehearsal process. You've really got to be aware of his abilities, upside down. When his eyes start to flutter and water, we know that it's time that he's got to come down.

Blamy: When I start reciting lines from other plays...

Is your transition from that role to the role of one of the IRA hitmen part of the challenge?

Blamy: Yeah, I definitely think it is. I have to find a totally different physicality, a different voice certainly. To be honest, I'm grateful that we're starting with these upside down scenes first, getting those out of the way first.

Do you have lines while all this is happening?

Blamy: While I'm upside down? Yeah, plenty of them. And then when he cuts me down, I have several more lines, which at the current stage of my training is a little bit strange. Because everything is kind of spinning, and I'm really kind of lightheaded trying to remember these lines.

You have to be off-book to even start rehearsal on this scene?

Blamy: That's exactly what Chip said. I held the script in my hand, and it was virtually impossible to read. It helps, though. Because I've got to be checking on my toes and limping around a bit. There's not a whole lot of acting there, and I'm just trying to get my bearings.

Decker: That scene is tough for me, though.

Oh, yeah!

It's hard.

Gentile: I've got to touch his nipple.

Aww...!

Gentile: I know...

That really has to rank among the most absurd things that you've done on the stage here in Charlotte.

Gentile: Yes. Touching another man's nipple was not what I came down here for. It was just kind of a side effect.

Just what impression do you expect us to come reeling out of the theater with after seeing all this?

Gentile: That's a good question.

Decker: For me, Perry -- we're actually going to be planning talkbacks twice a week each week during the run. People really want to talk about it. They want to talk to Dave about how it was like to hang upside down. They want to know how the effects were done, how the people dealt with all the different things that are going on. They really have a connection to it. It's one of those where you get the message. You just get it. No one has to hit you in the head with it, it doesn't preach to you. People just walk out and they go, "Duh."

Especially now. Like where are the weapons of mass destruction? Of course it's stupid, people. We get it. And it doesn't preach, but it makes its point so under the radar that you go, "Oh, yeah!" And you've had a great time the whole time you've been there because you're laughing one second, and then you're doing one of those "Eeñyew! Gross!" moments out loud. The audience is like -- one minute they're rolling in the aisles, and the next they're kind of rolling with revulsion.

I really think people are going to walk out feeling that they've had a wonderful time, number one, seeing brilliant writing, number two, and three, they're going to say, "He's right. This is stupid." It's stupid that we go to war. It's stupid that Catholics bomb Protestants in the name of religion. There's none of that 2-1/2 minute, three-minute monologue where we talk about the foibles of society and how wrong this all is. It's all there. It's just so cleverly wrapped up in a story that twists and turns.

It's one of those where you know where Scene 2 is going. Then Scene 2 happens, and you're completely wrong. But you know where 3 is going, and when 3 happens, you know where it's going, but you're wrong. All the way up to the very last minute of this show, you think you've got it figured out -- and then it blows your mind just one more time.

Speaking of blowing. What about all this technical stuff? Are you handling all the technical stuff and the directing, or are you calling in some reserves to take care of all this blood and gore and dead cats and explosions?

Decker: We've actually got all our dead cats. We've built rigs. We spent the entire summer doing a lot of this work. We have a whole day planned, where it's working with nothing but the rigs that blow -- these are going to look like movie effects. When Padraic walks up and puts two guns to somebody's head and shoots, brains are going out the other side of his head and up the wall. I guarantee you that's going to happen, and it's going to be awesome.

Well it didn't happen in Bug, so I was disappointed. This time around we're going to get the full off-Broadway effect, right?

Decker: You're going to get the full effect.