The Dallas Morning New
Performance: Dallas, Texas
10-Mar-99

Even if Red, White and Tuna didn't have a high-school reunion theme, it would be a homecoming. Co-creators and stars Jaston Williams and Joe Sears are back at the Majestic Theatre, the first large venue ever to right with prickly cadences of Tuna, Texas, population 21. They're all played be Mr. Sears and Mr. Williams, along with an extraterrestrial out-of-towner or two.

The end of A Tuna Christmas was deceptively sweet; we were left watching long-suffereing homemaker Bertha Bumiller (Mr. Sears) fox-trotting Christmas Eve away with smitten disc jockey Arles Struvie (Mr. Williams). But as we learn in the newest show, which opened Tuesday, Bertha's husband was watching, too, and dropped dead at the sight of not only adultery, but dancing. So in this installment, billed as the final chapter in the Tuna Trilogy, Bertha and Arles are engaged, giving the show one of its shrewder running gags: sex among the elderly. Bertha's son Stanley (Mr. Williams) can't stand to see his mother "flouncin' around like Salomey." But her bliss is jeopardized by the couple's first fight, over whether to honeymoon at the Passion play or the Rattlesnake Roundup.

Another new twist is the debut of hilarious hippie diehards Amber Windchime (Mr. Williams) and Star Birdfeather (Mr. Sears). Having changed their names from Fern and Berniece, the pair has managed to "break on through to the other side" -- Lubbock -- but return to Tuna for the reunion, which turns out to be a chakra-busting bummer. "I'd forgotten how heavy this town is," Star sighs.

But from the other side of the footlights, Tuna's satire has been getting more and more refined. Red, White and Tuna is not a retread; it may be the funniest of the three, despite a routine involving midgets that really doesn't work.

A Tuna resident who fails to click is a rarity; the rest of the population has taken firm root in the imagination. No matter how many times viewers tell themselves that both are played Mr. Sears, they'll still picture Bertha waiting in the wings while Star is onstage.

The method behind the transformations, heretofore carefully hidden, is not sacred in Red, White and Tuna. The marvelous final scene that results leaves a feeling that even though Broadway is still at least two years off, this really will be Tuna's last stand.