Everything’s bigger in Texas, even including the
personalities in Tuna, where the claim to fame is being the third smallest town
in the state.
Country holiday music fills the air and sparkling Christmas
lights dangle over the audience, setting a celebratory mood in the Downstairs
Cabaret Theatre, home to this production of A
Tuna Christmas. The play opens at the town’s radio station, OKKK, as the
DJs announce the controversial finalists in the annual holiday lawn decoration
contest.
All is not well in Tuna. The town is being terrorized
(albeit in an Andy Griffith sort of way) by the Christmas Phantom, a villain
whose dastardly deeds include unscrewing the bulbs on the town’s Christmas tree
directly before the lighting ceremony. Welcome to a place where rednecks abound
and divorcees will strangle their own children before allowing them to grow up
with a Yankee stepmother. It is Christmas Eve, and we are being given a peek
into the homes and hearts of this town’s comic and eccentric citizens.
The show unabashedly plays with the most offensive
stereotypes about the South, and the stage is set for a complete lack of
political correctness when Elmer Watkin arrives at the station to announce the
“Whitest Christmas Ever” family event, sponsored by Local Klan #249. Then
chain-smoking, camouflage-swathed Dede Snavely turns up to plug her store’s
Christmas blowout. She encourages residents to arm themselves against the
vicious Phantom by stocking up on handguns and grenades at deep, deep
discounts.
Petey Fisk, a dimwitted animal lover with a spitty lisp,
employs the airways to discourage exotic pet ownership, informing the public
that coyotes do not make good companions. These are just a few of the
characters that Jay Falzone and Tony Pepperdine, the only actors in the show,
dramatize during the two-hour play.
Want to see amazingly talented actors? This is the show.
These men embody 20 distinct characters and give each one a life, a back-story,
and a fully developed, quirky personality. Thanks to the swift hands of the
actors’ personal dressers, each character is blessed with his or her own
personal style, too.
Although the first act runs long, the actors’ enthusiasm and
energy is infectious. Their performances are so demanding, you have to wonder
how they’re able to muster the strength to take bows. And the characters are so
fanatic the audience can’t help but laugh at this slapstick farce.
The second act picks up when two serious career women, Helen
Bed and Inita Mann (yes, you’ve read those puns correctly), the head waitresses
at the Tasty Crรจme, are introduced. Gum-popping, boy-obsessed, high-school
dropouts with ratted hair and lots of “customer service experience,” the
ladies’ deepest desires include getting stellar gifts from their many
boyfriends and getting a food order for Joe Bob — the cranky, obese, and
effeminate director of the town’s A
Christmas Carol pageant — ready before he suffers another bout of
hypoglycemia.
The plotline is thin. The audience cares little if the
Phantom is apprehended or the contest fixed, but there are some sincere and
touching moments that ask the audience to consider what Christmas is about.
Although the obvious and often crass humor can be wearing, these actors extend
a hand to yank the audience in to this backwoods, backwards town. Think Mama’s Family meets Mad TV and you will have a good idea of what your warm welcome to
Tuna, Texas, will entail.
A Tuna Christmas plays at Downstairs Cabaret Theatre, 540 East
Main Street, through January 2, including Saturday, December 25, at 8 p.m., and
Friday, December 31, at 7 and 9:45 p.m. Tickets: $21 to $24 ($40-$50 for New
Year’s Eve shows). 325-4370, www.downstairscabaret.com
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2004.
