BWW Reviews: TUNA DOES VEGAS at Gaslight Dinner Theatre

Here's some unsolicited career advice for those of you who might be considering relocating to Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas: Tunanians - or Tunaites or however they refer to themselves - are sorely in need of a good beauty operator to help them keep their unruly wigs in shipshape, Bristol fashion. What with all the civic events, out-of-town trips and local affairs, every woman in Tuna should want their coiffures to be dazzling creations of the beauticians' trade.

Yet judging by the exemplars of hair on display in Gaslight Dinner Theatre's Tuna Does Vegas, the latest offering in the four-part theatrical adventure set in the Texas hamlet, there's not a hairdresser to be found and Joe Bob Lipsey is yet to find his true calling. Community theater is a harsh mistress.

Directed with an eye for the sight gag and comic timing still be polished at showtime by Gaslight major domo Greg Frey, Tuna Does Vegas affords diners and theater-goers the opportunity to do double duty: Take a visit to the always entertaining Tuna in the first act, with a side jaunt to Vegas in the play's second stanza. The script is not as smart and clever as the original Greater Tuna, but there's enough good-natured humor to be found to keep you riveted to your seat in anticipation of what's to come next.

Audiences have been treated to the Tuna Texans since 1981 and in that time they've entered the Southern theater vernacular with equal parts grace and wit, with enough outlandish behavior and situations to satisfy even the most discerning visitor. The citizenry's Vegas exploits and endeavors may not have the charm of earlier outings, but Tuna Does Vegas offers plenty of laughs.

Frey's work is obviously made easier by the efforts of Andy Riggs and Michael J. Parker, who play everyone in Tuna AND Vegas with a lot of success, although at the performance reviewed there were still a few rough patches to smooth over to ensure a thoroughly top-notch production. Riggs (playing the Thurston Wheelis half of the script) is delightfully zany, eager to please and self-assured, while Parker is zanily delightful, anxious to please and self-assured as he takes over the Arles Struvie list of characters. The two actors play well enough off of each other, there's a definite bonhomie between them to guarantee the audience responds as they should, and there's a level of trust built over two weeks of rehearsal. If there sometimes seems to be a struggle with lines and blocking, it's clear it can be overcome with more time spent together onstage.

As in all the Tuna plays, timing is everything and Riggs and Parker were a good 95% to goal in their second performance last week after opening day. Something else to be considered, as well, to ensure success is that actors must approach the Tuna characters as genuine people, with the same foibles and shortcomings as those of us who toil in the real world, but with heightened dynamics demanded by farce and the inherent drama of the theater.

But I gotta tell you: serve up a bounteous buffet of barbecue and all the fixin's and it helps even the most hackneyed of situations become all the more palatable and pleasing. And those folks down in Tuna sure aim to please!

• Tuna Does Vegas. Written and created by Ed Howard, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams. Directed by Greg Frey. Presented by the Gaslight Dinner Theatre, Dickson, at The Renaissance Center. Through July 25. Running time 2 hours, 30 minutes (with a 15-minute intermission for dessert service, which is just enough time to enjoy some blackberry cobbler)

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