Austin American-Statesman
Performance: Austin, Texas
26-May-99

After a year of fine-tuning, Red, White and Tuna is back, wise-cracking about small-town life, at the Paramount Theatre. Devotees of the resilient Tuna trilogy and its fair-haired stars, Jaston Williams and Joe Sears, need not fret about the script changes. The laughs come guaranteed.

This edition, which combines a high school reunion with a Fourth of July celebration, is no mere repetition of its predecessors. If Greater Tuna took a smack at the ascendant Moral Majority of the early '80s, and A Tuna Christmas humanized some of the caricatures from the first show, Red, White and Tuna takes a valedictory tone, sweetly endorsing the intimate live of favored characters, while bringing familiar storylines to a graceful close.

What has improved? Charlene (Williams) is her whiny worst/best when pregnant; Vera (Williams) never cracked the lip more smartly than when calling all her maids "Lupe" or threatening her ill-behaved son over a bullhorn. Pearl (Sears) and Bertha grow in stature because of their sexual and emotional frankness. Amber (Williams) and Star (Sears), granola heads who return to hometown Tuna, Texas, make a cultural contrast for boy-crazy Inita (Sears) and Helen (Williams) introduced as high-spirited waitresses in Tuna 2.

Flaws? Too many quips sound as if they were added for their tart rustic ring, rather than to advance the story or deepen our understand of the characters. One scene drags: Although Didi (Williams) is still adorably gruff, the dialogue inside her gun shop dawdles because of forced funny bits.

This matters not a fig to fans like me.