Tuna Christmas
Tuna Christmas
By Ed Howard, Joe Sears, Jaston Williams
Directed by Patrick Flick
Starring Mark Lanier and Michael Kevin Baldwin
Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Orlando FL</strong>
Some small towns like Grover’s Corners are idyllic and prosperous, but most small towns are more like Tuna, Texas – bitter and inbred. Watching over little Tuna we meet the two omniscient disk jockeys Arles Struvie (Baldwin) and Thurston Wheelis (Lanier). As they play-by-play the bitterly fought contest for the best Christmas decoration in town, we sense the bloody rivalry between the townsfolk the pair play when not on the air. This year the long time holiday decorating queen Vera Carp puts live sheep in a manger scene, but her reign is upset with the twin Cowboys-in-a-stocking “All I Want for Xmas” display by waitress Helen Bedd and Inita Goodwin. What push the naught/nice meter in their favor? It was the vandelous Christmas Phantom, and Tuna will never be the same. Ok, realistically it will never change, but “never be the same” scanned better.
The humor is silly and sophomoric but the costume changes are as impressive as the team of dressers back stage who get these two guys in and out of drag in a heartbeat. While the set is simple, it’s very nicely done with touches like two small street scenes perched atop the side wings. Both Lanier and Baldwin keep their multiple roles crisply separated. Baldwin’s best include Stanley Bumiller as the hippy reform school dropout taxidermist and Petey Fisk who rescues exotic pets that nearly kill him. Lanier shined as long-suffering Bertha Bumiller with her rotten kids and even worse hubby, and Joe Bob Lipsey as the flamboyant community theater director. At one point Bertha even describes Lipsey “not the marrying type”, at least not in rural Texas anytime soon.
“Tuna Christmas” is rising fast on the list of holiday shows that get done over and over, but it’s not yet up to the complete saturation level of that other show around the corner. Lanier’s approachable innocence and Baldwin’s lovable roguishness fit well together, and the show is just risqué enough to justify a baby sitter and an extra glass of wine: it skirts on heartwarming while still remaining real. This show is a stocking stuffer of friendly humor and low calorie entertainment for “a certain segment” of the entire family.
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