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Another Win: Greater Tuna delights with familiar characters
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Published: August 16, 2008
When the tiny town of Tuna, Texas, hits the stage in Winston-Salem for the second straight year, it's a sure bet that the Tuna's sons and daughters will have the audience laughing. And so they did at the Theatre Alliance's preview of the show Thursday night.
Greater Tuna is the first installment of a Tuna Trilogy by Ed Howard, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams that debuted in Austin, Texas, in 1981. It went on to tickle Broadway in 1994 and even had a showing at the White House.
A Tuna Christmas, the second in the trilogy, was presented last season by Theatre Alliance. Jamie Lawson, the company's artistic director, once again directs the action.
Unlike last year's Tuna Christmas, a larger production that showcased the same main characters -- two local-yokel radio announcers named Arles Struvie and Thurston Wheelis -- Greater Tuna is limited to two characters who portray many of their neighbors.
With only two men on stage, the performance is as much a showcase of acting as it is a challenge to keep the pace sufficiently lively. Such one-liners as, "I've prayed till my knees are flat," are frequently funny enough to keep things moving.
Additionally, the same actors who brought us Arles and Thurston last year are well-seasoned in their reprise roles. Gray Smith and Timothy Swift summon outrageous portrayals of characters, most of whom are exaggerated caricatures of Southerners that we may have known or heard about.
Smith, as Didi Snavely, the deep-voiced owner of a gun store, puts attitude into malice, the kind of woman who'd kill if she could get away with it, and we know it. Just as humorous is his take on Vera Carp, the pink-dressed church lady who is the vice president of the Smut Snatchers chapter and intent on getting smut out of the town and off the library shelves.
His foil is Swift, a large man who knows how to embody various hilarious women. As Bertha Bumiller, he's the epitome of a housewife who's not loved by her husband and rarely respected by her three dysfunctional children. As Pearl Burras, the aunt of teenage hoodlum Stanley Bumiller, Swift is even sharper; this is a woman who concocts "poison pills" to kill dogs when necessary.
Tuna is as crazy as ever, and Smith and Swift are delightful.
■ The Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance will present Greater Tuna at 8 p.m. today and Thursday through next Saturday, and at 2 p.m. Sunday and Aug. 24, in the Dunn Auditorium at SECCA, 750 Marguerite Drive. Tickets cost $14, or $12 for seniors and students. For more information, call 336-768-5655.
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