Their town

Lively local color in Greater Tuna

by Bill Rodriguez

GREATER TUNA; By Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. Directed by Patrick Trettenero. With Noah Racy and Lennie Watts. At Theatre-by-the-Sea through June 15.

This summer Theatre-by-the-Sea isn't calling in a familiar name as a headliner. They say they've learned that audiences aren't looking for the celebrity, short of Elvis, but the show. For their kick-off non-musical production they came up with a perfect example of what they mean: Greater Tuna, full of fun and cute as a tick, as my East Texas cousins-in-law might say.

There are only two actors running around playing nearly 20, which gets us rooting for them. The laid-back action takes place in tiny Tuna, Texas, where the folks are as colorful as washlines after Mardi Gras and everyone knows everyone's business. That certainly was a winning formula back in the early '80s, when actors Joe Sears and Jaston Williams had an off-Broadway hit on their hands. It was like Steel Magnolias without the high heels and hair rollers.

Right off we get a rowdy, knee-cymbals parade of characters as radio co-commentators Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie acquaint us with the latest local goings-on. For example, prominent judge has been found dead of a stroke, dressed in a Dale Evans bathing suit. On the weather front the town can expect 101-degrees and, fortunately, a dust storm to choke the plague of locusts. In a commercial, Didi Snavely assures us that all our lethal needs can be satisfied at Didi's Used Weapons. This is all going out over station OKKK, and what passes for satire by the show's creators consists of similar broad lampooning. Winners of the high school essay contest have written on such topics as "Human Rights: Why Bother?" and "The Other Side of Racism."

But it's not all cheap redneck bashing. Greater Tuna seems compiled from some long head-shaking, can-you-top-this conversation, bottles of Lone Star in hands, full of can-you-believe-they-said-that anecdotes about growing up in Texas. The show's creators are clearly fond of these denizens. The racists are light-headed with self-righteous delusions but never mean-spirited. Bertha Bumiller may want Romeo and Juliet banned from school for promoting teenage sex, but she is as matter-of-fact about the time she puts into Tuna Helpers, a charitable organization. And while she may yell at son Jody for adopting an eighth puppy, she is as quick to soften at sight of the critter and fondly mutter "He has done it to me again" as she pets it. The picture we get of these folks is one of, perhaps, relatives of ours that we might wince over but nevertheless stay fond of.

Lennie Watts has been a Theatre-by-the-Sea mainstay in secondary roles, and Noah Racy was a knockout in the lead of their popular touring musical Crazy for You. They are terrific together, let loose to spark these various loonies to life. Their best individual characters are, for Watts, Bertha, a mountain of bushy hair and lime green pants suit; and, for Racy, Petey Fisk, Tuna's lone bleeding-heart liberal. Fisk is a painfully good-hearted young man who heads the local humane society, agonizes over the approaching hunting season, and keeps giving extended stays of execution to Yippy, an unadoptable hyperactive rat terrier/ Chihuahua. The funniest exchange in the show might be when Bertha accuses him of being a "puppy pusher," luring her little Jody into an addiction as debilitating as drugs.

Greater Tuna isn't biting social satire. What it is is good-natured fun, a bemused look at small towns and small minds, where the healthiest reaction is just to toss your head back and laugh.