Have Yourself a Merry Tuna Christmas

This holiday season, of course, I’ll be seeing productions of A Christmas Carol (both the musical in New York and non-musical versions elsewhere) as well as It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. But there’s another show that’s suddenly become a Yuletide perennial, and I’m mighty glad of it. That’s A Tuna Christmas by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard. It’s their cheery semi-sequel to Greater Tuna and it, too, takes place in “the third smallest town in Texas.”

In North Carolina’s largest city — Charlotte — I caught the show at Charlotte Rep, which is ensconced at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, a complex that takes up several floors of a new office building. Much of the space goes to the 2,040-seat Belk Theatre, where Aida will play for a week in January and The Lion King will sit for a month starting in May. But Charlotte Rep uses the much more intimate Booth Theater, which seems like a modern Goodspeed Opera House what with its wrap-around
horseshoe balcony. Look close, though, and you’ll notice that it’s a cinder-block space; the false walls put up for accent’s sake are handsomely painted in the color that Crayola used to call “Burnt Sienna.” Forest green poles hold up the aforementioned balcony as well as another one
above it that’s used exclusively for lighting fixtures and storage.

The theater will soon play host to two tryouts: The first, Let Me Sing — a musical revue that “traces the evolution of American musical theatre and how its songs defined Americans to the rest of the world” — doesn’t have any Broadway plans yet but the second show sure does: It’s
The Miracle Worker with Hilary Swank.

Right now, though, there’s A Tuna Christmas, which I greatly enjoyed when saw it at a much different Booth Theatre (New York’s) in 1995. I liked the show even more when I caught it in New Jersey in 1997, but I liked it best here in Charlotte, because the audience truly embraced it. I guess the farther south this play travels, the more attendees can relate to it, as the Charlotteans obviously do. How else can you explain that Tuna‘s back in town for its fourth go-around and that the entire house was sold out?

Michael Edwards has been around for previous productions and has become an audience favorite in the process, playing such roles as the deejay at OKKK radio, the ambulatory-challenged Aunt Pearl, the dim-witted Sheriff Givens, the oh-so-flamboyant community theater impresario Joe Bob Lipsey, and — most winningly — Bertha Bumiller, who has a husband who never comes home, a son who’s on parole, and a daughter who loves, of all people, Joe Bob. At least a half-dozen Broadway shows currently have men in women’s drag, but it’s still new enough in Charlotte that the mere sight prompts a torrent of laughter. The ample Edwards got a bigger response for his sexless bottom encased in red pants than his co-star, the more svelte Duke Ernsberger, did when he showed up as Charlene Bumiller with her saddle-bagged hips and buttocks.

Edwards shows that he knows comedy is a serious business in the way he has Bertha rue, “Christmas used to be oh-so-special. Lord, what’s happened to this family?” The moment is tender and real, and it really made our hearts go out to someone who’d been fodder for laughter just moments before. Later, Edwards showed that he doesn’t fully believe comedy is a serious business, for he broke character and laughed at what had just happened. He broke character again when, as Joe Bob, he hit his arm as if to rebuke himself, then mouthed “Ow” as if he had inadvertently hit too hard and had hurt himself. The audience adored it.

When Ernsberger was seen only waist-up behind a counter, then suddenly crouched and crouched again to create the illusion that he was going down a flight of stairs, Edwards again broke character: He laughed, then wet his index finger and made an imaginary chalk mark in the air as if to say that Ernsberger deserved credit for doing this maneuver awfully well. And, again, the audience responded by breaking into appreciative applause. This is the type of thing that makes some veteran theatergoers roll their eyes in disgust, and it’s possible that Edwards’s director, Terry Loughlin, had the exact same reaction — but to Charlotte theatergoers, it added to the live and therefore “unpredictable” experience.

To be sure, the crowd had plenty to enjoy even when Edwards walked the straight-and-narrow path. I remember how audiences in New York and New Jersey enjoyed the references to such local delicacies as Frito Pies and Liver Mush, but there wasn’t quite the warm laughter of recognition that such lines got here. The audience screamed at “She screamed like white trash at a tent meeting.” Whenever the word “ass” was said, at least one woman in the crowd let out with a whoop of astonishment. And yet, when Bertha said, “I wish that Joe Bob would go back to Beaumont or Corpus Christi and take all his posters and soundtracks with him,” the line was met with abject silence. I remember the torrential response that line got from New York and New Jersey theatergoers, who, I’m sure, knew someone who has plenty of window cards and original cast albums living with him.

Duke Ernsberger had a good time (and so did the audience) with DiDi Snavely (doesn’t that last name sound as if it’s right out of a Restoration comedy?), the dissipated hausfrau who loves to sing while she smokes. I’d forgotten the authors’ wonderful brainstorm of having DiDi start croaking “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and then take a long, long drag on her cig. When she lets it out, she doesn’t sing “had a very shiny nose” but, simply, “glows” — the word she would have been at had she not interrupted herself with that gulp of smoke.

Ernsberger got the biggest laugh of the show, and it’s of the type that particularly delights me. The line that prompted the laugh was “What?” No, it doesn’t sound as if it should tear down the house — but, indeed, it did. Here’s why: There was Snavely in her kitchen when Edwards, as a hopeless stutterer, appeared at the window to ask a question. Alas, with that speech impediment, it took minutes for him to say a simple sentence. When he finished his long and torturous line, Snavely said “What?” so that the poor soul would have to go through the arduous process all over again. How the audience loved that — and also loved it when the stutterer inadvertently got his revenge. Unruffled by Snavely’s request, he began his minutes-long statement again, causing the malicious lady to sit at her kitchen table, stretch her arm over it, and rest her head on it until the stuttering finally came to an end.

Yes, this two-actor, multi-character show gave the crowd something they can’t possibly see at home or in a movie. But I, too, got something here that I don’t get when I attend theater in New York or New Jersey. When I arrived, the usher pointed me to my row and told me that I had the tenth seat in. Nine Charlotteans occupied the seats before it and, the moment I approached them, each and every one of them immediately smiled and stood up so I’d have an easier time getting to my seat. No one stayed seated and begrudgingly moved their legs to the left or right so that I’d be forced to squeeze between them and the seat in front. No one gave me a “you’re disturbing me” scowl. There really is such a thing as Southern hospitality, isn’t there?

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]