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LIGHTNING REVIEW: Treadway and Dyar shine in 'Tuna Christmas'

Scott Treadway and Preston Dyar star in 'Tuna Christmas'

By Bill Moss, Published: May 26, 2017

If you've seen “A Tuna Christmas” before, you know one of the thrills is anticipating the familiar lines from familiar characters and the incredibly fast pace.

The lines are as funny as ever in the newest edition of the comic favorite, which stars Scott Treadway and Preston Dyar. Playing 11 roles each, the popular Vagabond veterans somehow manage to sustain the breakneck pace of the show through dozens of costume and makeup changes, each time with a new voice, dialect, gender or age.
We know before she comes on that Treadway’s cigarette-puffing Didi Snavely in a death-rattle voice will pitch the perfect burglar-dispatching handgun as a Christmas gift. “You will have a holly-jolly Christmas and the criminal will have a silent night.” We look forward to Treadway’s drawling Stanley, just out of prison, and his very Southern and very prissy Charlene, who is Stanley’s twin and an aspiring actress with a crush on the director of the town’s production of “A Christmas Carol.”
Dyar is equal to the tall order, too, of his portfolio of characters, four of whom are female. If Dyar is less over-the-top than Michael Edwards, who played this role a couple of times, his (slightly) toned-down portrayal actually works better in some scenes, especially the final scene romance with Treadway’s Arles. He makes Bertha seem real and vulnerable.
The second of four Tunas based in the “third smallest town in Texas,” the comedy opens with the two actors playing newcasters at radio station OKKK. They’re reading outrageous local news items, punctuating them with the familiar refrain, “He did, he did, he did!”
Treadway gets some of his biggest laughs not with his lines but with his facial expressions, especially as socialite Vera Carp shouting out the window to stop children from molesting her Christmas decorations.
Only “Tuna” can make a speech impediment as hilarious as Treadway's Petey Fisk, the kind-hearted Great Tuna Humane Society director who is taken advantage of an assortment of mammals and reptiles.
A long (for “Tuna”) second act scene at the Tasty Kreme is a highlight, with both actors disappearing off stage just long enough to emerge as another character for a brief hilarious cameo.
We didn’t detect any dropped lines or muffs, which always seems amazing in “Tuna Christmas” but maybe ought not be given the caliber of the two stars.
Even a makeup malfunction on Saturday night did not ruin the comic momentum of the final scene. As Arles, Treadway lost half his mustache. He tried pressing it back on, once, twice, three times. Hell with it. Off it came. The show must go on. Soon enough, after a couple more snorts of hooch and a few steps of a slow dance, Arles and Bertha waltz off and another “Tuna” is in the can.
If you’re looking for a belly-laugh provoking summertime diversion — and what sentient American isn’t — then stroll on down to the Flat Rock Playhouse and watch Treadway and Dyar cut loose. In “Tuna,” Texas, it’s always OK to laugh at the politically incorrect.