‘A Tuna Christmas’ – two actors, 22 characters in the Off-Broadway Palm
It’s holiday season in Tuna, Texas, where OKKK news personalities Thurston Whellis and Arles Struvie are reporting on the hot competition in the annual Yuletide lawn display contest and Joe Bob Lipsey’s production of “A Christmas Carol.” Both events are in jeopardy – the first because of a mysterious phantom who’s vandalizing the decorations; the other as a result of the promoter’s unpaid electric bills. Join Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre for A Tuna Christmas, where not even the OKKK spiked punch can drown out the Longhorn town’s brand of full-throated seasonal spite.
Although it’s the third smallest town in the Great State of Texas, Tuna is filled with lots of zany characters, each possessing a giant chip on their sunbaked shoulder.
Like Vera Carp.
The wealthy small town zealot has won the town’s annual Christmas Yard Display Contest fourteen straight years. But now her streak is being threatened by the Christmas vandal, and she won’t stand for it.
Bertha Bumiller can only wish she had problems that inconsequential. With a philandering husband and three unmanageable kids, Bertha is struggling to keep her family together during a particularly stressful Christmas season.
The Smut Snatchers are trying to ban “Silent Night” since decent folk don’t sing about “round, young virgins.” And Joe Bob Lipsey hasn’t experienced this many problems producing a play “since the all-white production of ‘Raisin in the Sun.’”
But while the characters are as plentiful as Santa’s helpers on Christmas Eve, there are only two actors in this show, and together they play a scintillating 22 roles – male, female, young, old, nasty and even nastier, they play them all. You’ll be astonished as they trade barbs and insults with even greater speed and adroitness than their costumes, wigs and on-stage personas.
A Tuna Christmas is both a loving ode and biting satire of small town life, where familiarity breeds contempt and people do their level best to move from one disappointment to the next.
“So funny it could make a racoon laugh affectionately at Davy Crockett,” says The New York Post. “It’s far too good for just Christmas.”
October 31, 2017.
About the Author
Tom Hall is both an amateur artist and aspiring novelist who writes art quest thrillers. He is in the final stages of completing his debut novel titled "Art Detective," a story that fictionalizes the discovery of the fabled billion-dollar Impressionist collection of Parisian art dealer Josse Bernheim-Jeune, thought by many to have perished during World War II when the collection's hiding place, Castle de Rastignac in southern France, was destroyed by the Wehrmacht in reprisal for attacks made by members of the Resistance operating in the area. A former tax attorney, Tom holds a bachelor's degree as well as both a juris doctorate and masters of laws in taxation from the University of Florida. Tom lives in Estero, Florida with his fiancee, Connie, and their four cats.