Greater Tuna reels in laughs

Think Tennessee Williams. Okay, then cross that with Kids in the Hall, add Robert Altman's film Nashville and throw in one really noisy dog. Stir. And that's sort of what watching Greater Tuna is like.

This is a good thing, actually. Double-degree sophomore Laura Sheperd's production of Jaston Williams, Ed Harvard, and Joe Sears's play follows 19 characters over the course of a day in the minuscule town of Tuna, Texas, as their stories intertwine and overlap, and it's all really funny.

The gimmick here is that all 20 characters are played by just five actors, frequently in drag, and it's a pretty impressive feat. There isn't a lot of plot to speak of, really - no narrative arc or anything, but more like a bunch of semi-random, often interconnected events - but that's not really a problem. It is, after all, a day-in-the-life sort of thing, and too much neat resolution would probably make the play a lot less effective than it is.

There's not a lot of point in detailing exactly what happens since that's not the point of the production. The story sort of centers around the town's 270-watt radio station OKKK and the townspeople's relationships both to it and to each other. In a nice touch, the play features radio music from Oberlin singer-songwriters junior Josh Ritter, and seniors Pete Galub, and Ben Zelkowicz, whose "Bomb the ACLU" makes for a wicked audience sing-along.

Some events - the death of a local judge being probably the most prominentÊ- float through the different stories, and several of the characters appear in supporting roles in different scenes. But on the whole, the play is structured more as a series of fragmented vignettes, with time marked off by OKKK newsbreaks. Some of these vignettes work better than others; the subplot with the judge takes a particularly dark and affecting turn midway through, while the story of a dog's accidental poisoning meanders kind of unpleasantly and sitcom-like. It does, however, feature one particularly memorable and deeply disturbing sound effect.

Plot isn't really the issue, thoughÊ- the real focus is on the actors, who are on the whole excellent. It sounds a little ridiculous to have the same guy play a repressed housewife, a psychotic Klansman, the town drunk, and a brain-addled city council candidate, but senior Ben Zelkowicz pulls it off remarkably well, making each character distinctive in both appearance and manner. And he's not the only one: sophomore Fedje Tanger-Donnelly is excellent as Stanley, the troubled teen, but equally convincing as a OKKK anchorman and a town socialite.

In this play more than most, the acting is really what matters, and while it might seem like an incoherent mess or something resembling an actors' workshop, the characters are well-drawn and well-portrayed enough that the gimmicky casting stops being noticeable early on. Senior Ben Esner is particularly impressive, especially in his portrayal of the slightly desperate animal rights crusader Petey Fisk, who acts as something like the show's moral center.

Though the play takes a slightly serious turn in the second act, as several of the characters have conversations with or about God, what's on stage isn't exactly heavy drama, which is hardly a bad thing. Greater Tuna's a straightforward farce, and while it's often hilarious, its biggest flaw is in the mocking tone it adopts towards many of its characters, who are often presented as little more than stereotypical ignorant Texans. This isn't a fatal drawback, but it does lend a slightly snide tone to a few of the sketches, particularly those involving the elderly dog poisoner Pearl Burras (played by first-year Molly Benson).

Greater Tuna isn't exactly Beckettsian in terms of ambition, but the show's lack of pretension and desire to do little more than make the audience laugh is both refreshing and successfully realized. It doesn't aim to be much more than a good time, but it succeeds thoroughly in that regard.

Greater Tuna runs tonight and Saturday, Feb. 28, at 8 p.m. in Little Theater, and 2 p.m. on March 1. Tickets are $2.

Is anybody there?: First-year Molly Benson portrays a little old lady, just one of Greater Tuna's multi-character roles. The show runs tonight and through the weekend in Little Theater. (photo by Laren Rusin)