|
Washington City Paper
By Bob Mondallo |
|
|
It's old news that the Tuna guys are funny. Quick-change comics Jaston Williams and Joe Sears have been bringing the 20 or so denizens of Texas' third smallest town to D.C. for a decade and a half, so word's spread about the shenanigans of such folks as censorious Smut Snatcher Vera Carp (Williams), who is rewriting Baptist hymns to eliminate the racy parts, and mutt-poisoning Pearl Burras (Sears), who has a gravitas second only to Kate Smith's. Fans now greet gravel-voiced Didi Snavely (Williams again) -- who answers the phone at their Used Weapons Shop with a cheery, "If we can't kill it, it's immortal" -- as an old friend. Ditto long-suffering mom Bertha Bumiller (Sears) and her sweetie, Arles Struvie (Williams), an announcer on local radio OKKK, where the announcement that a group is holding its Fourth of July rally on July 5 is business as usual. After countless visits in Greater Tuna and A Tuna Christmas, Williams and Sears qualify as a comic institution. If you haven't caught them yet, shame on you. And shame on me for not explaining sufficiently why you should. Red, White and Tuna, their saga's third installment, enlarges slightly on the rueful quality that has always been present in the characters. But it doesn't stint on laughs. The town of Tuna is staging a high school reunion, complete with a hotly contested election for Reunion Queen. Coming home for the festivities are the likes of R.R. Snavely, who has been kidnapped by aliens, and the tie-dyed, spaced-out newcomers Amber Windchime and Star Birdfeather (formerly known as Fern and Berenice), who've been auditing their karma in Lubbock. Also on hand are Stanley Bumiller, whose career in taxidermy finally took off when he invented"roadkill sculpture," and devoted animal rightist Petey Fisk, who'll lock himself into a Plexiglas hut with 50 live scorpions to protest the "Varmint, Critter, and Pest Fest." Why are these folks a riot, rather than appalling? Partly because their locutions ("It's hotter'n a gnat's snatch on the equator") aren't heard much hereabouts, and partly because sitcom animosity, whether veiled ("You know I've always like Vera, but not very much") or not so veiled ("Look at Pearl Burras out there, makin' shade), is bound to prompt a yuk or two. Trot out a quip that could have been penned by Neil Simon ("I've never liked stop signs...They are so abrupt") and there's no reason it shouldn't score, too. I'm less sure why it's bust-a-gut funny when Smut Snatchers member Bertha defends herself from accusations of swearing with the proclamation "'Pee' is not a cuss word, it's a function." A mind-set is being presented there, not a joke. Accurately observed, the line ought, at most, to be good for a chuckle of recognition. It doesn't get a laugh when your mother says it; when Bertha says it, people fall in the aisles. Credit their timing, perhaps? Sears and Williams are deft at celebrating not just punch lines, but pauses, slow burns, head-turns, dance steps, and, most especially, gaits. There's not a character who doesn't shuffle or amble in the audience's presence, but the actors clear turn into dervishes backstage to make their costume changes so quickly. Just to let patrons know how much they're doing back there, they do one slower change out front. Cynical Pearl and dyspeptic Stanley turn their backs to the audience, and -- after an adjusting of wigs, a shedding of robes and headbands, a donning of vests, and adjusting of petticoats, and finally a shifting of postures that tells more about the differences in the characters than all these other changes together -- they turn back as late-blooming lovers Bertha and Arles. You recognize them before they've spun even a fraction of the way...and are poised to laugh before they say a word.
|
