`Greater Tuna' more outrageous than story of the one that got away
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
By Ben Jones
Special to the Gazette
Tuna, Texas, is about as bonkers as a burg can be -- even in the Loon Star State.
"Hanging Judge" Buckner was found dead of a stroke while he was wearing a Dale Evans one-piece swimsuit. R.R. Snavely, aided by a bottle of Mogen-David, saw a UFO that looked like ``a giant hovering chimichanga without the guacamole."
Elderly Pearl Burras loves nothing better than to slip a strychnine pill into a biscuit, wrap it in a dough ball and feed it to an egg-sucking dog. And Didi Snavely, of Didi's Used Weapons, advertises weaponry that kills. ``If it doesn't, bring it back, and we'll give you one that will," she promises in a radio spot.
They're all to be found in "Greater Tuna," a riot of a play that kicked off the 61st summer-stock season at the Barn Theatre in Augusta Tuesday night to a packed and appreciative audience. Guffaws rained louder than the thunderstorm that came just after the play's end.
The two-man play puts Barn mainstays Joe Aiello and Scott Burkell through their paces, calling on each of them to play as many as 10 wildly divergent characters -- young and old, male and female, kooky and kookier. And Aiello and Burkell have a field day in a succession of outrageous getups.
The play, a send-up of Southern rubes in a one-stoplight town, was written a quarter-century ago, yet some of the humor couldn't be more topical. Take the local bluenose society, the Smut Snatchers of the New Order, who have bent to the winds of change and adopted a Spanish-language program -- in moderation.
They learn the Spanish (ably butchered by Aiello as the snide Vera Carp) for such phrases as ``Do you speak English?" ``Please send the boy for my luggage," and ``I didn't order this!"
``That is all the Spanish any red-blooded American ought to have to learn," declares Carp, echoing the House of Representatives.
The costume changes occur so quickly that one suspects backstage legerdemain. In one scene, a succession of callers dials up radio talk-show host Leonard Childers (Burkell). Somehow, with the help of four backstage change artists and some Velcro, Aiello appears as the dress- and ammunition-belt-wearing Didi Snavely, stage left, vanishes into the wings, then reappears as the suit-and-straw-boater-wearing Phinas Blye, stage right, 15 seconds later.
Even more challenging is that Aiello and Burkell must shrug off accent, attitude and demeanor for new ones with each costume change. They accomplish the alterations seamlessly, so that by the second act the audience chuckles whenever a character reappears onstage. Burkell masters the posture and stance of an old Klan coot, Elmer Watkins, as easily as Aiello, aided by pigtails and padding, inhabits the earnest determination of an overweight high school girl.
It takes a wacky village to raise the roof, and in ``Tuna," Aiello and Burkell are greater than the sum of their parts.
Barn Theatre opener brings tears ... of laughter
AUGUSTA — One thing was clear Tuesday as the Barn Theatre opened its 61st season. Everyone loves Joe Aiello and Scott Burkell.
During the opening night performance of "Greater Tuna," both Aiello and Burkell had to wait out long and excessive applause, the most sustained when the two actors took the stage.
It's not undeserved. Aiello and Burkell have logged 50 seasons between the two of them. Together, the veteran actors play nearly 20 roles in "Greater Tuna," a fabulous farce consisting of vignettes involving the citizens of Tuna, Texas.
Though at times the actors don't differentiate the characters enough, the audience's ebullient appreciation crashed through the Augusta theater like a tidal wave. People were shrieking with laughter, doubling over and clutching their stomachs and fishing in their pockets for tissues to wipe away tears.
Most of the vignettes revolve around broadcasts from the Tuna, Texas, radio station, OKKK, manned by Thurston Wheelis (Burkell) and Arlis Stuvie (Aiello). But the radio station only remotely connects to some of the other scenes involving the Bumillers — chiefly Bertha (Burkell) who turns off the radio to deal with Jody's (Aiello) horde of puppies, Stanley's (Aiello) slacker lifestyle, and Charlene's (also Aiello) depression over being too "chunky" to make the cheerleading squad.
Though these events may not seem very interesting, the constant comedy coupled with the rapid-fire costume changes by the two stars and loads of physical and vocal comedy make this show funnier than a three-legged dog on a flight of stairs.
There's no real plot to "Tuna," but there are some events that shape the vignettes: the mysterious death of a local judge in a Dale Evans swimsuit; Pearl (Burkell), who serves "bitter pills" to rambunctious dogs; and the local meeting of the "Smut Snatchers" of Tuna, Texas, led by the Rev. Spikes (Burkell) and Vera Carp (Aiello).
Burkell's at his best as old woman Pearl, who he plays with body-jiggling and tongue-wagging antics. He also shows off his considerable talents with the Rev. Spikes, drunk R.R. Snavely and with NRA organizer and clan leader Elmer Watkins.
But Burkell doesn't do enough to make local radio personality Leonard Childers or Bertha Bumiller as colorful as his other characters.
Likewise, Aiello has standout characters. His depiction of the meek and mild Humane Society president Petey Fisk is brilliant because it's so unlike Aiello's usual brash style. He also is bust-a-gut hilarious with Stanley and Charlene Bumiller and gun-toting Didi Snavely.
Aiello's weakest characterization comes with Vera Carp, but he gets the most laughs playing her in a display of physical comedy that brings down the house.
In the recent history of farces performed at the Barn, "Greater Tuna" would make the lower end of a top 10 list, but it produces enough laughs to drown out the loudest thunderclaps outside the theater.
Christopher Tower of Richland reviews theater and teaches at Western Michigan University.
Originally published June 1, 2006
Be sure to catch 'Greater Tuna' at Augusta
AUGUSTA -- If I told you two actors could portray a whole town full of characters, complete with costumes and wigs, and the action would keep going almost nonstop, you might suspect something fishy. And you'd be right. "Greater Tuna" is a whopper.
Scott Burkell and Joe Aiello, regulars at Augusta's Barn Theatre, have netted a whole school of crazy characters, from the relatively normal show hosts at radio station OKKK to an elderly lady who poisons neighborhood dogs, a spurned wife who has bought a gun but not the ammunition and a lisping leader of the Humane Society who worries about how fish feel.
Created in 1982 by Texas actors Joe Sears, Jaston Williams and Ed Howard, "Greater Tuna" covers a day in the life of Tuna, the third-smallest city in the Lone Star state, where the Lions Club is too liberal and townspeople gather to ban objectionable words such as "hot" from the dictionary.Director Dusty Reeds knows how to use timing to great effect with radio hosts Thurston Wheels (Burkell) and Arles Struvie (Aiello). She has them batting the verbal ball back and forth with such rhythm it sounds like a radio jingle.
And when the Elvis-coifed Leonard Childers (Burkell) mans a call-in show, Aiello not only portrays male and female callers of various ages and demeanors but also pops up on opposite sides of the stage -- which might be believable if this were "Star Trek" and Scotty was manning the transporter room. As it is, Aiello's ability to make the unseen trek from one side of the stage to the other while changing costumes produces an effect as unexpected as the illusion from a magician's sleight of hand.
Costume designer Thomas J. Bernard deserves a share of the credit for creating outfits that are easily exchanged and include the padding to make Bertha Bumiller (Burkell) shapely while her daughter Charlene (Aiello) is pudgy.
Without a doubt, the funniest accessory is the sagging, but believably weighted, brassiere of Pearl Burras. Burkell knows just how to toss his-her weight around to keep the audience laughing, even when he isn't saying a word.
That, of course, is the real success of this show. It's a marathon of talented acting from Burkell and Aiello.
Using imaginary props, they pour and drink coffee, search through nonexistent papers and wrestle with a houseful of dogs. Burkell could be the no-nonsense leader of the National Rifle Association one minute, prance the stage as a shapely mom the next and then walk with the bend of an old lady who still has plenty of twinkle in her eyes.
Aiello goes from pulling crowd-pleasing facial contortions by the cigarette-puffing DiDi Snavely to springing onto a chair as a nose-picking little boy, then awkwardly attempting the splits as an overweight cheerleader hopeful. But when he showed up as Vera Carp in flowered dress and matching coat Tuesday night, he was so believably the southern lady I forgot for an instant he wasn't.
Burkell and Aiello are reprising roles they played in 1986, when "Greater Tuna" first was presented at The Barn. Perhaps 20 years ago, some of the characters' bigoted opinions were funny, but I doubt it. Lines inviting minorities to try out for the town musical and they "might get cast in chorus" are so politically incorrect by today's standards that shocked gasps were heard in the opening night audience of about 400. One character's suggestion of a Klan meeting received strained silence from the audience. Such lines are supposed to give an idea of the true nature of Tuna, but the playful script would be better served without them.
The lighted model train-sized city of Doug Blickle's set provides the perfect backdrop for "Greater Tuna," and a pair of old radios, basking in a spotlight's glow at the rim of the stage, add to the warmth.
So, if you are angling for an entertaining evening, reel in "Greater Tuna" before it has a chance to be the one that got away.
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