For more than three decades, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams have parlayed their limitless imagination and boundless talent into laughter.

They make me laugh, they make you laugh, they make each other laugh. And no doubt all of us who proudly call ourselves citizens of the Gulf Coast region can use a laugh about now.

Sears and Williams are the inspiration behind the most esteemed and gabbed-about citizens of the mythical town of Tuna, Texas.

Over the years, audiences have shared with them A Tuna Christmas, waved their Red, White and Tuna and taken a joyous tour of Greater Tuna. But now they're headed not just out of town, but across the border to the land of slots, craps and girlie shows.

Tuna Does Vegas launches the 2008 MSC OPAS season with a two-night run, with curtains at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at Texas A&M's Rudder Auditorium.

The notion of Bertha Bumiller and Arles Struvie roaming the bright lights of the Vegas Strip -- well, it's a natural. "The two towns are equal in terms of psychosis and insanity. It's just a matter of numbers," Williams said recently.

In Tuna Does Vegas, Williams and Sears each portray 11 characters. Williams brings to life regulars Arles Struvie, Didi Snavely, Petey Fisk, Charlene Bumiller Pugh, Mama Byrd, Vera Carp, Helen Bedd, Anna Conda, and Maurice; along with Fred and Elvis 42. Sears inspires Thurston Wheelis, Bertha Bumiller, Aunt Pearl Burras, Leonard Childers, Inita Goodwin, Joe Bob Lipsey, Carlotta, Captain Marlin Hooper, Shot, Ethel and Elvis 11.

The two-act show opens with Arles announcing on the radio that he and his wife, Bertha, are headed to Vegas to renew their wedding vows. But rather than getting away from it all, it all goes with them.

The idea for taking Tuna out West came from Williams.

"I told my agent that maybe we needed to get these people out of town," he said. "I thought we needed to see them in a society that wasn't their own. Las Vegas was the logical place because it offers so much potential for comedy."

So Bertha and Arles, whom Williams calls the heart of the show, pick Valentine's Day to re-pledge their love. "It was a kick to try to figure out how to get everybody else to go. We started with the premise that Bertha and Arles wanted to be alone. They want to get away from Tuna, and it ends up that Tuna is just down the hall."

Act 2 opens in the parking lot of the well-known but economy-driven Hula Chateaux, and eventually moves to the Undertow Cabaret.

Like most of the duo's work, Tuna Does Vegas works its way through a thousand laughs to reveal a message.

"It's also a play about the nature of home," Williams said. "Joe and I spend a lot of time on the road, but there is always this amazing joy of coming home. It's like that in any small town, like Tuna. People stay in places for a reason."

So the story brings to Vegas such comfortable reminders of Tuna as a gun show for Didi.

"And Didi's mother has had kind of a mental breakdown that's been going on 20 years, so Didi had her playing imaginary Bingo," Williams said. "So the old woman hears about everybody going to Vegas, so she starts playing imaginary roulette and that drives Didi crazy. So she takes mama to get her gambling fix and Didi's going for the gun show."

Williams said Vera Carp is going because she is desperate to find something new to ban in Tuna. She's led the fight to ban just about every book and every word, so she figures that if Vegas can't lead her to something new to prohibit back home, her work in Tuna is done.

"Helen and Inita go because there's a big rodeo in Vegas and they talk Joe Bob into going with them," Williams said. "Joe Bob figures that with everyone leaving town, the restaurant would be closed and he wouldn't have anywhere to eat."

Needless to say, MSC OPAS regulars who have had more than one helping of the Tuna trilogy will delight in this new comedy, directed by Ed Howard.

Williams and Sears have been writing and performing together since the early 1970s, when they met in San Antonio doing Shakespeare.

"Joe and I had such a solid friendship for almost a decade before any of this Tuna stuff ever happened," Williams said. "It was a friendship that even success couldn't destroy. And I think if we had not known each other as well as we did, and known each other's family, I don't think this would have flown. We would have had quick success and it would have gone away."

The comedy dynamic between the two became evident early on.

"Yeah, we were hot at parties," Williams said. "Everyone wanted us at their theater parties, and there would come a point as it got later in the night that they would just turn it over to us for half an hour. They would just say 'let's hear it.'"

It soon became clear that it was an alliance that could make them a living.

"We kinda honed it over the years, and early on Joe had started telling me Aunt Pearl stories and I just wept with laughter," Williams said. "And what really came through was the amazing affection he had for that crazy old lady."

Now, nearly 30 years later, the power of Tuna, Texas, lives on. Las Vegas may never be the same.

Tickets for Tuna Does Vegas range from $34 to $77 and are on sale at the MSC Box Office (845-1234) or online at www.mscopas.org.

Save the date

Sept. 21 and 25-28 and Oct. 3-5: The Theatre Company, Cinderella, The Musical; Sept. 25-27: StageCenter, The Adventures of Treasure Island; Sept. 21-Dec. 14: Siempre! Hispanics at MSC Forsyth Galleries; Sept. 26-28: Magnolia Music Festival; Sept. 22-Oct. 23: Carnaval! exhibit at Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History; Sept. 27: BV Museum of Natural History Sporting Clay Shoot at Gunsmoke Shooting Range and Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day at the museum.

Oct. 11: Brenham 3rd Annual Festival of Arts; Oct. 11-12: Scarecrow Festival at Chappell Hill; Oct. 12: Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra Classical Favorites at Christ United Methodist Church.

Tom Turbiville's e-mail address is tom.turbiville@theeagle.com.

Comments

(Requires free registration.)

0 comment(s) found!