This weekend, American Stage opens two irreverent comedies that are poles apart. For its main stage production, the company presents A Tuna Christmas, the second in a cycle of plays set in the fictional, extra-small town of Greater Tuna, Texas. Two consummate comedic actors – Matthew McGee and Candler Budd – portray the few dozen quirky characters that populate Greater Tuna, each suffering from his or her own Yuletide preoccupations, from a community theater production of A Christmas Carol fraught with problems and disrupted by protesters from the local censorship-loving Smut Snatchers, to an annual Christmas lawn decoration contest and the “Christmas Phantom” who’s been vandalizing lawn displays all over town. For the latest installment of its new After Hours production series, American Stage presents T. Scott Wooten’s new stage adaptation of the absurd 1936 exploitation film, Reefer Madness, that offers a tongue-in-cheek town hall meeting-style take on what happens when a group of college kids get hooked on herb. A Tuna Christmas, 7:30 p.m. Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., 3 p.m. Sun., Nov. 13-Dec. 28, $24-$39 ($10 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before curtain), and Reefer Madness, 7 p.m. Tues. and Sun., 10:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat., Nov. 14-30, “Pay-What-You-Can” admission, 211 Third St. S., St. Petersburg, 727-823-7529, americanstage.org.
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2008.
