Review: GREATER TUNA at Coyote Stageworks

By: Mar. 29, 2019
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Review: GREATER TUNA at Coyote Stageworks

Greater Tuna is a strange little play that was written in 1982 and was a huge hit in middle America before it made its way Off-Broadway, and eventually to HBO. There are three plays in the series, and Coyote Stageworks has mounted the first one as their final production in their 2018/2019 schedule as a nod to their first season.

There are 22 characters (including a dog) in the play, but only two actors portraying these small-minded throwbacks to what used to be the dark ages of the non-PC 1970s in Tuna, Texas. Only Petey Fisk (Chuck Yates), the sweet soul that is the only human at the animal shelter, has a conscience of any consequence, while the other characters are bumbling buffoons who commit murder (then dress the body in a woman's bathing suit for ultimate humiliation), poison dogs, and ban words from their backwoods lexicon (like nuts and knockers) with their Smut Snatchers Society. The winning essay for the high school this past year was "Human Rights: Why Bother?"

Review: GREATER TUNA at Coyote Stageworks

The device used to bookend the play is a radio show with two local men who forget to go on the air, lose the news, and update us on the local goings on before we take a peek into the small town world they're discussing on air. Now you know who we're dealing with in Greater Tuna.

Yates, founder and artistic director of Coyote Stageworks, is a fine actor and director. He slips in and out of outlandish costumes, and delivers finely detailed performances of each character ranging from a young teenage girl, to a boy who is followed around town by a pack of dogs.

Alan Denny, also an accomplished actor with a long career in New York productions from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Tempest, does a fine job with the other characters, most notably as Pearl Burras and Bertha Bumiller (dressed by Frank Cazares, Jim Lapidus as well as Yates and Denny) in hilarious drag. Cazares wigs are pure comedy in and of themselves.

Review: GREATER TUNA at Coyote Stageworks If you were/are a fan of Mama's Family or the comedy of Hee Haw you will love this show. Everyone is a caricature of how many folks see small towns in the breadbasket of America, most notably in hardcore, backwoods tiny Texas towns. However, I am not sure of the point of the play other than skewering them. I can see how it would have played in the 80s, exposing small-mindedness in broad- stroked characters but if you had asked me four years ago, I wouldn't have thought it would play well today. However, Greater Tuna found its laughs with the audience, so maybe it is ringing the right bells during these turbulent times when being PC is taking a big hit.

It is easy to Monday night quarterback the director's choices, so first I will say that director Larry Rabin kept the action going with excellent staging, and fun bits of sound were used such as the rotary phone being dialed. I think the play may have benefitted from some more sound, like when the broadcasters crumpled up and threw away news items. The scene changes were, for the most part, seamless but I also wonder if the pacing had been jacked up a bit, if it would have added to the fun of watching the two actors scramble to get on stage as different characters. Review: GREATER TUNA at Coyote Stageworks

Big kudos to Coyote Stageworks for always doing a fine job mounting their shows, but as the saying goes "you can't please all of the people all of the time" and such is the case here. I would encourage you to decide for yourself; the rest of the audience was howling with delight. Greater Tuna just isn't my favorite dish of fish. And as Thurston Wheelis and Arlis Struvie, our two broadcasters point out in the end, "If you can't find something you like about Tuna, move!"

Greater Tuna by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard produced by Coyote Stageworks will run for nine performances at the Annenberg Theater at the Palm Springs Art Museum from March 22-31, 2019.

The Annenberg Theater
101 Museum Drive
Palm Springs, CA, 92262
760-325-4490

To purchase tickets online click here.

**All photos by David A. Lee Photography



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