It's not often that I consider walking out of a play at intermission, but A Tuna Christmas at American Stage is so relentlessly stupid, I almost convinced myself to skip the second act. Almost but not quite — because I was there to review the whole show, after all, and couldn't be sure that there wouldn't be redeeming moments in its latter half.
As it turned out, I could've safely vacated the premises early: Act 2 of Tuna is only marginally better than its execrable predecessor, and neither act ever justifies its idiotic, unfunny existence. Imagine two dozen mindless caricatures of Texas humanity spouting fountains of one-liners that don't deserve even a smile; imagine two intrepid actors working breathlessly to impersonate all 20-odd characters over two wasted hours; and then imagine your brain cells, fed with nothing but guano and dying like martyrs by the thousands behind your compromised cranium.
Who is supposed to be entertained by this tripe: truant adolescents? Immigrants with no English? There's more genuine humor in the phone book. I've had more entertainment staring at the screensaver on my laptop.
The premise of the play is that we are in the third smallest town in Texas on Christmas day, when various Tuna residents — from the clueless radio announcers Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie, to the boring members of the boring Bumiller family — go for a laugh on virtually every line. And fail to earn one at virtually every opportunity. We meet Vera Carp, dedicated to removing smut from Tuna artworks, Didi Snavely, owner of a used weapon shop, and Joe Bob Lipsey, director of the Tuna Little Theatre, who's gay and supposedly silly and no funnier than anyone else.
And we see two squandered actors — the talented Matthew McGee and Candler Budd — give their all to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, with the usual results. In fact, the only real fun in A Tuna Christmas comes from the rapid costume changes (outrageous clothes by Adrin Erra Puente) — and even Julie Rowe's kinetic direction can't keep these from becoming routine after a time.
As for Jessica E. Greene's set, it's a spacious, largely undecorated saloon with an old-fashioned radio console and a Christmas tree. In other words, there's not much to look at just when you desperately need distraction from the intolerable dialogue.
You think I exaggerate? Well, the only way I can fully express what's wrong with Tuna is to quote from it directly. So let's look at an all-too-typical segment. Here's Thurston and Arles exchanging would-be zingers in Act 1:
Thurston: Now, Arles, where's your Christmas spirit?
Arles: Don't get me goin'. Trudy and I got divorced because of Christmas.
Thurston: Oh, that's right, I forgot.
Arles: She wanted a set of Japanese steak knives for Christmas and I got her a heating pad instead.
Thurston: That's when she poured all that grapefruit juice in the Christmas punch.
Arles: She sure as hell did. She knew I was allergic to grapefruit juice when she sneaked into the kitchen and poured God knows how much of it into the punch.
Thurston: I remember it sure made you itch.
Arles: Itch? Hell, I scratched so hard the doctor made me wear mittens. I still had 'em on in divorce court.
No, this isn't the slow start before the real comedy begins; this is supposed to be the real comedy. And we're supposed to laugh at the words "heating pad," at the all-too-hilarious "grapefruit juice in the Christmas punch" and at the priceless "mittens" joke. And truth be told, there were human beings in the audience on the night that I saw the show who did laugh at these things for reasons only known to them. But after two hours of such dialogue, even these easy targets became more skeptical, and more and more the gags just fell flat. You can fool some of the people some of the time …
One last point: The actors mime many of their actions like so many refugees from Our Town, but the unreality of this stratagem only distances us further from what's on stage. In Tuna, Texas, it seems, not only are the gags tepid, you can't even get a real cup of coffee. Not much of an advertisement for live theater.
I didn't walk out. I spent two hours in Tuna.
And I hope not to go back for a very, very long time.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2008.