“Red, White, and Tuna”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2010

“My Tuna, oh my Tuna
The only place I know
I’ve often thought of leaving you
but don’t know where I’d go.”

- “Charlene Bumiller”

“Guess what Stanley Bumiller is doing now that he’s out of reform school,” I asked my husband over breakfast this morning. “Remember Stanley, Bertha’s son? Anyway, now he’s big time installation artist doing neo-taxidermy.”

My husband was pleased to hear this and enquired after Bertha’s daughter, Charlene. “Oh, she’s hugely pregnant and married to a serviceman,” I reported.

This might pass for typical breakfast chatter between an old married couple, if we weren’t discussing the fictional residents of the equally fictional Tuna, Texas, that great state’s third smallest community. My husband has directed the first two Tuna shows – Greater Tuna and A Tuna Christmas – but neither of us had any experience with the third play, Red, White, and Tuna, currently running at The Theater Barn.

If you have ever seen a Tuna show, you will be as delighted as my husband and I were to catch up on the antics of the townsfolk – the Smut Snatchers are now rewriting the lyrics to the Sunday School hymns, R.R. Snavely makes an untimely return from wherever the heck he’s been, Vera Carp and Aunt Pearl Burras are still feuding and things really escalate when Vera loses the Reunion Queen crown too…well, you’ll see. In the meantime Aunt Pearl’s prize-winning potato salad makes a big impact at the 4th of July High School Reunion. Oh, and there’s a wedding…well, an elopement…well, there’s a honeymoon at any rate.

But if you have never heard of Tuna, Texas and this hilarious quartet* of plays by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard, you are still guaranteed a big ol’ silly good time at this production. And you can read up on all the characters that appear in Red, White, and Tuna HERE

In the originals Williams and Sears played all the roles – male and female – and Howard directed. Here John Trainor and Tom Frye tackle the task under the direction of Phil Rice, with the aid of some stalwart (unseen) dressers and a PILE of wigs and costumes designed by Michelle Bohn. While the script gets off to a rather slow start, both the writers and the actors pick up steam as the evening progresses, and by the end you will be thoroughly convinced you are watching an entire town full of folks and not two actors cavorting in pantyhose and cowboy boots.

If you have seen, and been put off by, the darkness of the satire in “Greater Tuna,” I encourage you to try out one of the later Tuna plays. Unusually for writers/performers who have created a successful cash cow, there are big gaps between the creation of each Tuna show. Greater Tuna premiered in 1981, A Tuna Christmas in 1989, Red, White, and Tuna in 1998, and, as near as I can tell, Tuna Does Vegas in around 2008. This team isn’t interested in cranking out lucrative sequels as fast as they can, but in periodically revisiting characters they genuinely love. And, obviously, the creators have aged and mellowed over the nearly thirty years they have been honorary Tuna-ites. Consequently each show is a little gentler, and brings a little more humanity to the characters. There is much less spite and misery and many more laughs as the series progresses.

Even though it had been about a decade since I had seen a production of A Tuna Christmas, I remembered the final image of Arles Struvie and Bertha Bumiller dancing on Christmas Eve, and greeted news of their engagement at the start of Red, White, and Tuna with great felicity. When we first met these characters in Greater Tuna life looked bleak. At the close of this play, as they chased each other about their cut-rate honeymoon suite, celebrating as only two middle-aged folks on their second wedding night can, I was as happy as a chicken in a stir-fry, or whatever it is those Texans say.

And much credit for that happiness goes to Trainor and Frye, who are decidedly middle-aged themselves and still muster tremendous energy to play this flat-out, quick-change low comedy with vigor and shameless slapstick.

I do have a couple of quibbles, and they are mostly with Rice’s directorial choices. I know full well what hard economic times these are, and consider the Theater Barn prudent to open with a two-man, low budget show. They have also cut the position of Artistic Director out of their budget (a cut that saddens me) and trimmed their season by about a month by lopping off their June and late September shows. Times are tough and the Barn is doing what it can to continue to offer good entertainment on less money. I get it.

But why has Rice dispensed with the small, cheap hand-held props that would add so much to this production? I am talking about things like telephones, papers for the radio station news-desk, cigarettes (you don’t need to light them) – all items that are inexpensively acquired or already in the theatre’s prop closet.

And if you are going to mime bigger props – cars, refrigerators, etc. – then make sure you mime them well. I can’t tell you how many times Bertha and Charlene walked through their refrigerator. If you want me to believe there is a fridge over there, walk around it.

And a helpful tidbit of advice for the actors, especially Trainor. When you are playing a lady of a certain age, be sure to sit with your knees together, especially when you are facing the audience. Of course these actors change characters so often that it is possible they forget when they are playing ladies and when they are playing gentlemen. If there’s a breeze around your knees you are probably wearing a skirt and you should remember to keep the window closed so the flies don’t get it.

I confess that, wonderful as Trainor and Frye are, I was missing the late Stephen J. Bolte the minute I walked into the theatre. When R.R. Snavely took off from the Theater Barn stage to galaxies unknown back in 1999, he was played by Bolte, who was absolutely delightful in multiple roles in A Tuna Christmas. The image of R.R. boarding that UFO is burned in my mind as a special moment in my theatre-going life, and I see a LOT of theatre.

That is not the only indelible memory I have of Bolte on stage. He was a very likable performer who made every character he played more three-dimensional, human, and sympathetic. The only role I only role I really didn’t like him in was the despicable Billy Flynn in Chicago. I met Steve once and he was a genuinely nice guy, much smaller and gentler than he appeared on stage. I don’t think he was very well suited to playing bad guys.

While I celebrate the success of this production, I raise a virtual glass to the memory of Steve Bolte and the many hours of great entertainment he gave to countless Theater Barn patrons and theatre-goers throughout the Capital Region. His untimely death this past spring is a loss I will be mourning for a long time to come.

Red, White, and Tuna runs through July 11 at The Theater Barn, 654 Route 20 in New Lebanon, NY, with performances Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 5 , and 8:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $24 for evening performances and $22 for the Sunday matinees. For reservations call the box office at (518) 794-8989.

Original paintings, photographs, and high quality reproductions by local artist Barbara Rosenzweig are on display and available for sale in The Theater Barn lobby throughout the season. E-mail for more information.

The show runs two hours and twenty minutes with one intermission and has some racy language, imitations of drug, alcohol, tobacco and firearm use, and men in drag. If any of that bugs you, send a letter to the Smut Snatchers of the New Order, c/o Vera Carp, Tuna, TX. But be warned you’ll be missing out on a passel of laughs if you stay at home.

* To my knowledge the fourth Tuna play – Tuna Does Vegas – has yet to be staged in this region. It is still on tour, although, alas, not in this Blue State, and it is unlikely the rights are available yet.

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