Charlie Flynn-McIver and Scott Treadway

Western North Carolina's funniest acting team unites disparate talents and audiences

By Scott Walters

Left, Ginger Poole, Scott Treadway, Charlie Flynn-McIver and Neela Munoz in Don't Dress for Dinner at Flat Rock Playhouse; right, Treadway, Flynn-McIver, Jim Sorensen and Erin Mosher in Flat Rock's The 39 Steps (photos by Flat Rock Playhouse, Treadshots.com)

Like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Charlie Flynn-McIver and Scott Treadway have taken to the road together. And while the road between Flat Rock and Asheville in North Carolina may not be as far-flung as the road to Morocco, the aesthetic distance may be nearly as great.

Flat Rock Playhouse, where Treadway is associate artistic director and has been an audience favorite for 27 years, is the go-to place for romps like Don't Dress for Dinner or Greater Tuna and musicals like Anything Goes. North Carolina Stage Company (NCSC), which Flynn-McIver co-founded in 2001 and where he serves as artistic director, has an edgier reputation, doing plays like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Lee Blessing's Chesapeake and Hamlet. But when the two of them join forces—well, as Samuel French might say, laughter ensues.

Flynn-McIver and Treadway (Treadway and Flynn-McIver?) established their partnership in 2004, in a co-production (by Flat Rock and NCSC) of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), and they quickly became western North Carolina's favorite comedy team. In 2006, the theatre critic for the Asheville Citizen-Times wrote they "might not be Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis"—isn't that last one a compliment?—"but there's no denying actors Charlie Flynn-McIver and Scott Treadway have some kind of acting chemistry going on." Say Flynn-McIver, "It's been a long time since I've worked with someone that I've been so simpatico with on stage. It makes a big difference."

He laughingly says that he and Treadway "blatantly take advantage of Scott's popularity down at Flat Rock" to attract a new audience to NCSC. "We get a lot of comments from people buying tickets who say, 'Oh, I would go see Scott Treadway read the phone book!'" When those people arrive, they encounter another side of his talent in plays like True West. "A lot of people who are used to seeing Scott in a particular kind of show," explains Flynn-McIver, "enjoy seeing him in something a little less...safe, would you say, Scott?" "Let's drive to Asheville and hear Scott speak filth," Treadway responds good-humoredly.

The nearly 30 miles of traffic between the two theatres flows both ways: Fans of NCSC also drive out to Flat Rock to see Flynn-McIver in a farce like Don't Dress for Dinner, or this season's planned production of The 39 Steps, where they find a more playful, less edgy side of Flynn-McIver. Both groups benefit. "When the audience becomes familiar with a pairing of actors," Treadway says, "they trust us. They say, 'Okay, we'll go to Sam Shepard with you—we wouldn't have normally, but because it's you.' And they're probably a little more open to it when they watch it because of their familiarity with us."

As with the great comedy teams of the past, part of the McIver-Treadway magic is rooted in contrast. Treadway is tall and slim, with a perpetually worried expression perfect for the beleaguered, frantic characters he often plays. His face seems to converge in an inverted V-shape, a caret of concern, like Stan Laurel just before he starts whimpering.

While Treadway is all verticals, Flynn-McIver is horizontal, his broad face and even broader smile forming an open, sometimes puzzled, sometimes pugnacious expression as he leads Treadway into one fine mess after another.

Like their physical characteristics, their approach to comedy differs. Flynn-McIver is "a little cerebral about it," while Treadway is more intuitive. But they are both in agreement about one thing: Even in the broadest moments, the acting must be sincere. "There's just gotta be this honesty behind it, no matter how crazy these characters may be," Treadway insists. "If there's not truth and sincerity behind it, it's not funny, because the audience has no reason to invest." Flynn-McIver agrees: "You look at some old pros, and it's kind of awful how they get laughs. They'll get up there and do this off-text stuff—I'm not an off-text kind of guy. Let's stay on text, let's not add any lines, let's figure out the lines that are hard—don't shirk them off and say you can't do it."

Which doesn't mean they can't have a lot of honest fun within the confines of the text. Flynn-McIver remembers one particular moment in The Complete Works that made him realize how much he enjoyed working with Treadway. "We were doing the Julius Caesar section—I was playing Caesar—and Scott comes in as the Soothsayer and he's got his T-shirt pulled up over his head like Cornholio in Beavis and Butthead, and he's got these big buggy eyes, and I turned around and saw him and I just lost it, and the whole rehearsal stopped. We decided to keep that in the show—every night he would do that, and I would look back and break character, and it would just stop the show." He sums up: "We have a really good way of looking at things in terms of what they could be, not just what they should be, and that allows for a lot of possibility."

Those possibilities expand each time they work together. "It means that we can begin rehearsals in a place that's a little further along, because we're not trying to figure each other out," Flynn-McIver observes, a point that will be particularly relevant when the duo assays dozens of characters in The 39 Steps, with only two weeks of rehearsal. In addition, according to Flynn-McIver, "We can say things to each other that strangers can't. Scott can say to me...." "That's just not funny," Scott offers helpfully. A slight pause, then Flynn-McIver continues steadily, "Well, no, no, not that...." And having duly extracted a laugh from their interviewer, they both crack up.

The importance of their long-term working relationship can't be underestimated. "When we did Perfect Wedding last year," Treadway remembers, "there were two moments in rehearsals where we just naturally hit something timing-wise that would never have happened with a stranger. You could not have directed it. People who don't know each other would eventually get it, but we just naturally knew how to play each other."

Is there now a "Scott-and-Charlie slot" in the NCSC season? Informally, yes—there is a small window of opportunity each year when Treadway's schedule at Flat Rock Playhouse relaxes a bit and they can team up. This season, for instance, they are planning a production of Boeing-Boeing, the kind of farce that Treadway has been doing for years and is gratified to see "making such a resurgence." But he can't hide a little annoyance. "For years, those farces were looked down on, but once there's a Broadway revival, suddenly everybody's doing Boeing-Boeing. Why should it take a Broadway revival to legitimize that genre? That pisses me off!" A mischievous grin spreads across Flynn-McIver's face. "That's why we decided to do it at NCSC," he says, "to piss Scott off." And they're laughing again.

Their advice to young actors sounds like self-description. "Be open to friendship and sincerity," Flynn-McIver says, "and keep those relationships going that you have now—the people you work with that you really enjoy." And, Treadway adds, "Watch a lot of those old comic pairs work."

Scott Walters is an associate professor of drama at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He is the co-author of Introduction to Play Analysis and the director of the Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education.

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