Tucson Weekly: Double Take (May 22

From Worlds Of Legend To Podunk Western Towns, Local Theater Has It All.
By Margaret Regan
LAST WEEKEND A couple of brand-new theatrical ventures made their Tucson debuts with some not-so-new theatrical material.
Review Millennium Theatre Company, the new resident troupe in the Historic Y, turned in a respectable rendition of Greater Tuna, while the Theater League, a presenter new to the city, mounted a hardy Camelot at the TCC Music Hall. Neither play broke new ground, but, oddly enough, the moral struggles of Camelot's medieval King Arthur managed to be more gripping than the more contemporary humor of Greater Tuna.
Greater Tuna, a comedy that continues through June 1, is set in the third-smallest town in Texas. Most of its knowing humor comes from its authors--Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard--sneering down at the foibles of small-town America. You don't get anything near the compassionate profundity of, say, a Horton Foote, who has made a life's work of writing serious, enduring plays about small-town Texans.
Loosely structured around a podunk radio station, Greater Tuna is chock-a-block with certifiably zany characters, all 21 of them played by a mere trio of energetic actors. There's the unfortunate would-be cheerleader Charlene, whose mother suddenly realizes that high school graduation will at long last end the girl's seven years of failed attempts to make the squad. Then there's the eccentric lady who keeps a supply of strychnine on hand to kill stray dogs, the moralistic male judge found dead in a provocative bikini, the smoldering juvenile delinquent, and so on.
Luckily, though, the work does have a bit of a political edge. A fellow by the name of Elmer Watkins keeps coming on the station to invite people to do somethin' 'bout them immigrants living down by the river. The KKK youth league announces its summer workshops over the radio. The cheerleader mom is leading the charge to purge the school library of such licentious works as Romeo and Juliet, and the local Baptist minister is compiling a list of smutty words to be deleted from the dictionary.
The three actors, Jesse Jones, Ina Gillers Shivack and Stephen Spiegel, do a stalwart job of slipping in and out of all these characters, making gender, costume and voice changes with lightning speed. Spiegel is a scream as the lisping Humane Society representative, and he also does a mean Charlene. It's downright entertaining to sit back and see just what this lively cast will do next. A couple of moments do flag, but Millennium artistic director John Gunn mostly keeps his actors moving briskly through their paces.
Camelot, a full-scale '50s-style Broadway musical by the all-star team of Lerner and Lowe, has surprising staying power. I'd never seen it before, and was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't just cutesy old-fashioned takes on boys and girls in royal crowns. A few of the jokes are dated, to be sure, and at least one song, "How to Handle a Woman," predictably laments the unpredictability of women. Nevertheless, its larger story, about justice, duty, fate and debilitating passion, is satisfyingly operatic in dimension, and many of its songs are lovely ("Camelot," "If Ever I Would Leave You").
The show, playing in Tucson only one weekend, had some name-brand stars, notably Dale Kristien (Guenevere), a veteran of The Phantom of the Opera who's possessed of a beautiful soprano, and television's David Birney as Arthur. Birney's singing voice was workaday, but his acting was engaging. Stephen Bishop sang a gorgeous Lancelot. If the painted backdrops of the set were a touch on the hoary side, the live orchestra in the pit was more than welcome, a treat for Tucsonans too accustomed to recorded music. Overall, the production was a not-bad introduction to Theater League, which hopes to step into the classic-Broadway-musical gap left by the defunct SALOC.
Greater Tuna continues at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday though June 1, at the Historic Y Theater, 738 N. Fifth Ave. Tickets are $14, $12 for seniors and students, $10 for children. Millennium's summer season also includes The Boys in the Band, June 13 through 29; and Laughing Wild, July 11 through 27. A ticket for all three shows costs $36, for two shows $25. For more information or for reservations call 882-7920 or 882-7926.
For information on the 1997-98 Theater League season, which includes Oliver! in September, The Sound of Music in February and Pippin in May 1998, call 791-4266.

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth