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Louisville Courier-Journal
By Roger Fristoe |
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Louisville audiences have seen other actors playing the range of zany. characters created by writer-stars Joe Sears and Jaston Williams in their 1980 stage hit "Greater Tuna." But "A Tuna Christmas," the sequel to that ubiquitous 1980 satire about the third-smallest town in Texas, offers our first chance to check out the originals. They prove an unalloyed delight. This is a pair of consummate comics, with impeccable timing. They can be at once howlingly funny and oddly touching; extreme though their characters may be, Sears and Williams anchor them in recognizable reality. As played by Sears, ultimate Texas housewife Bertha Bumiller comes on like a cartoon in poison-green polyester - but we still sense a heart that's as enormous as her bouffant hairdo. Williams also lends enough wistful realism to Stanley, the oldest of Bertha's three unruly kids, to make us hope he'll succeed in putting a delinquent past behind him. The sequel's skits revolve around the town's twin holiday preoccupations: unmasking a "Christmas phantom" who's desecrating yard displays and learning whether the town treasurer, Williams' Dixie Dewberry, will succeed in pulling the plug on a production of "A Christmas Carol" because the Little Theater hasn't paid its light bill. As in "Greater Tuna," Thurston Wheelis (Sears) and Arles Struvie (Williams), announcers at radio station OKKK, offer periodic bulletins about the carryings-on. In a dizzying series of costume changes, the two actors essay a total of 22 characters, including such other favorites from the original as Sears' lovable Aunt Pearl and Williams' smut-hating Vera Carp. The show also introduces some new Tuna types - notably Inita Goodwin (Sears) and Helen Bedd (Williams), good-time girls who work at the Tastee Kreme restaurant. They are, as a Texan friend of mine is wont to say, a big mess. And Sears has sly fun with Joe Bob Lipsey, the sissy Little Theater director fresh in from Lubbock. "A Tuna Christmas" seems in some ways better constructed and more satisfying than "Greater Tuna." As inventively directed by co-writer Ed Howard, its action moves at a jaunty clip toward a conclusion that sees certain characters moving, in their own loopy way, toward positive change. Loren Sherman's set is colorful enough to set the locale and spare enough not to get in the busy actors' way. And Linda Fisher's costumes are so hilariously on target that they often nail down the characters before Sears and Williams can utter an outrageous word. Performances will continue at the Macauley Theatre through Sunday.
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