The good news first:
Live Theatre Workshop has given us a solid production of “Red, White and Tuna.”
The bad: The script is, well, not good.
That’s a shame.
“Red, White and Tuna” is the third in a series of plays about the fictional town of Tuna, Texas and all the whacked-out characters who live there. Playwrights Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard clearly struggled with this one; we can only assume they’ve got Tuna-fatigue.
The first, “Greater Tuna,” was a hoot. The second, “A Tuna Christmas,” was not as funny. “Red, White and Tuna” has a few good laughs. Just a few.
But if you are going to mount a play that yearns to be funny, you can’t get a better cast than Stephen Frankenfield and Keith Wick, who play all 19 characters in the LTW play.
The two know how to milk a line better than most.
“Red, White and Tuna” brings back many of the redneck and outrageous folks we met in the first play.
Among them: Arles Struvie and Thurston Wheelis, DJs at OKKK radio station. Arles is set to be married to Bertha Bumiller, who has an insane weakness for animals. But not nearly as insane as Petey Fisk, who works at Tuna’s Humane Society. Also back is Didi Snavely, who runs Didi’s Used Weapons. Her sage advice: “If you can’t get shot in a small town in Texas you’re not trying very hard.” And the playwrights wisely kept in Vera Carp, the nose-in-the-air vice president of Tuna’s Smut-Snatchers of the New Order, which monitors books, TV shows and movies to see which should be censored. Almost all of them, the Smut Snatchers decide.
The town is abuzz: It’s the Fourth of July and the Tuna High School Reunion. Vera Carp is expecting to be homecoming queen. She is also planning to host Bertha and Arles’ wedding, but she has to cover her furniture with plastic first.
“Red, White and Tuna” takes us through the weekend, where there are arguments, confessions, budding love, and, always, outrageous behavior.
Frankenfield and Wick have been to Tuna before: They were in LTW’s 2009 production of “A Tuna Christmas.” As they did in that show, they switched genders and characters with an ease and distinction.
Jodi Ajanovic directed with a sure hand. She, too, is a repeat visitor to Tuna: she directed that 2009 production.
But this is an over-long show (2½ hours) with nothing to hold it together. The playwrights were clearly stretching and it just doesn’t work. In “Greater Tuna,” they took us through the characters and showed us the connections between them. Here, with a few exceptions, they just stuck characters in, gave them a few laugh lines and sent them on their ways.
On the other hand, you will laugh. And Wick and Frankenfield are way too much fun to watch on stage. And the theater is air conditioned. Those are all good reasons to catch the show.
