Men in Dresses

Small-town humor provokes big laughter with two-man tour de farce 'Greater Tuna'

by Lily Dayton

Monterey County Herald

Y'all are invited to the small town in the big state where people owe more money on their tractors than on their cars and where the four seasons are known as almost summer, summer, still summer and hunting season.
The comedy show "Greater Tuna" will be featured at the Golden State Theatre in downtown Monterey tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 p.m.
This production, presented by Artbeat, features the two actors and quick-change artists Jef Holbrook and Topher Payne portraying 22 different characters through a series of rapid-fire costume changes. All of these changes will take place in less than 10 seconds.
Ed Howard, one of the three original writers of this comedy as well as the director of its Broadway production, is directing the show that will appear tonight in Monterey.
Howard and his friends Jaston Williams and Joe Sears wrote this comedy in 1981. It quickly became a cult favorite in Austin, then moved on to the Alley Theatre in Houston, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and an extended run at Circle in the Square on Broadway in New York.
Described as "deliriously funny" by Alan Ulrich from the San Francisco Examiner, the story takes place in the (fictional) third-smallest town in West Texas.
It's a typical day in town until the local judge is found dead in a woman's one-piece swimsuit. This starts a chain of events that interrupts all of the characters' lives, creating havoc, mishaps and loads of laughter.
When asked what makes this show so tremendously funny, actor Holbrook's immediate response was "Men in dresses."
Fellow actor Payne followed this up with, "What makes this show funny is that small towns are small towns wherever you go. Every town has its own local busybody, the woman older than Egypt who everyone's terrified of and the local delinquent often discussed at the dinner table. The humor comes from the identification. And then of course there are the men in dresses."
These two actors have a playful camaraderie between them, so it comes as a surprise that they didn't know each other before they started their first "Tuna" tour last February.
"We met at the first rehearsal," said Holbrook. "We had two weeks to put the show on and we just took off like old friends. Now it's hard to imagine doing this show with anyone else."
Holbrook commented that the rehearsal process was a challenge for the two of them with roughly a dozen characters a piece — two hours of material for only two actors; but he said that the quick character changes have become second nature to them both during the show.
To help with the quick-change process psychologically, they each have their own tricks.
"Jeff has his whole dressing room routine, but my biggest trick is looking at what shoes I'm wearing," said Payne.
Holbrook described his dressing room routine. "I sit in the dressing room and listen to music that makes me happy. Tom Petty or the Wallflowers or basically any good, twangy acoustic music that makes me think of Texas. The music relaxes me — it's Pavlovian. If you go on stage all tense, you're dead."
"Almost all the costume changes happen off-stage," said Payne. "We have two amazing dressers back stage that work twice as hard as we do. It's an absolutely full change — for example, going from a reverend in a full suit with a wig and a moustache, then walking on stage as a sheriff with a gun, holster, sunglasses and hat."
Though Holbrook considers himself an actor before a comedian, he's very comfortable in a comedic role because he's previously acted in many comedy shows (including the film "Morris the Cat").
"I think stand-up would be fun, but I've never done it," he said. "I love acting — and comedies are fun."
Payne considers himself a writer who acts. "I primarily work as a playwright and I just finished my first book — a memoir of my mid-20s, "Necessary Luxuries." During this time, I was diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment three times. Then, after the last treatment, I took off with just a suitcase and traveled to Scotland. The book takes off when I return to America with nothing but my suitcase."
He credits the life-changing experience of cancer diagnosis and the subsequent roller coaster of treatment as giving him a new lease on life. "This gave me a new appreciation for taking risks and seizing opportunities that are out there, being aware of what you can live without. This tour is an extension of that experience. (Before cancer treatment) I never would have set everything aside and jumped into a 16-passenger van."
Payne said that the humor in "Greater Tuna" is appropriate for adults and older children.
"Not that there is any material that would be inappropriate for young kids, but the comedy is geared toward 12 and up. Still, we have had 8 or 10-year-olds in the audience that were cracking up."

"Tuna" Just As Funny As a Jerk In the Knee

by Scott Whited

The Pueblo Chieftain

Is it more enlightened to laugh at people, or to laugh with people? The audience at "Greater Tuna," the season finale for the Center Stage Performing Arts Series on Saturday night, didn't have to concern themselves too much with that question. They got to laugh both with people - their fellow seat-sitters at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center, and at people - the hapless inhabitants of Greater Tuna, the setting of the play described in the program as the "third smallest town in Texas."

It's late summer 1981, and the folks of Tuna are small- and narrow-minded, perfect fodder for laugh-inducing jabs by playwrights Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard (who also directed). A record-burning is in the offing, but listeners of omnipresent radio station OKKK are told not to worry: pompadoured Little Richard is going to hell, but hip-swiveling Elvis up in heaven because he's a good ol' country boy at heart.

This play is a favorite for both touring and ambitious local companies, mainly because of its primary theatrical device: Its 20-character cast is played by two virtuoso actors. This attracts actors because of the challenge and producers because of the reduced cost. Pueblo has, in fact, seen a number of versions over the last decade or two. People love to laugh (just ask Ed Wynn in "Mary Poppins") and "Greater Tuna" provides plenty of laughs.

The two-man cast in this production featured two Georgians, Columbus-bred Jef Holbrook and Atlanta-based Topher Payne. Both were talented clowns, milking their characters for all the broad comedy they could. Heck, with so many yokel Texas twangs on display, they were halfway home. We all know that hicks and rubes are funny by definition, right?

A fine example was Holbrook's R.R. Snavely, a besotted local who played an imaginary violin while trying to figure out whether he had or had not seen a UFO (short for "Unidentified Flying Object," OKKK repeatedly clarifies for its audience), shaped like a chalupa. Payne depicted many a goofy laugh-inducer, especially the holier-than-thou Vera Carp, whose sleep-excused show-stopper was splaying her beskirted legs indelicately in the crowd's collective face. Happily shocked chortles filled the auditorium.

There were occasional nods in the direction of empathy for the hicks. Holbrook's big-hair housewife Bertha Bumiller does her best with her oddball brood, but betraying husband Hank (also played by Holbrook) leaves her soothing her pain with the country Dr. Phil: Patsy Cline singing her ode to eternal love, "Always." Animal-lover Petey Fisk (Payne) beseeches a Lord he's not sure is out there, "If you did create all this, we could sure use some help taking care of it."

"Greater Tuna" takes sure aim at our funnybones. But the comedic response is similar to that of a knee's jerk in response to a tap by a physician. We know these situations, accents, and characters are supposed to be funny, so we laugh as a reflex, almost without thinking.

Upon reflection, however, there is a mean-spirited quality to the humor. These people are provincial, not terribly well-educated, and biased in favor of their own experiences and habits. They deserve to be laughed at, right?As Vera Carp says to a fellow viewer visiting the town's funeral home to pay respects to a male "hanging judge" who's been found dead of a seeming stroke while wearing a Dale Evans swimsuit, "Glass houses."

Glass houses, indeed.

A Bookless Signing

by Richard Eldredge

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Leave it to inimitable Atlanta columnist and playwright Topher Payne to stage a first during Thursday night’s book signing at Wordsmith’s in Decatur.

“What’s that saying about when life gives you lemons?” Payne explained to Buzz. “I’m considering it the ultimate going green book signing.”

Payne’s in-store event for “Necessary Luxuries,” a new collection of his popular David magazine columns, had to soldier on without the actual books Thursday, because of an error in shipping from his publisher.

Instead, Payne read selections and took advance orders for future books. Local act the Wayne Fishell Experiment banged out some original tunes for attendees.

Thankfully, Payne is having better luck with the infinite supplies of the audio version of the tome, which is raking in some nice coin for the author via customer downloads on iTunes.

3x Cancer Survivor Soars

The fabulous Daryn Kagan has a conversation with me about life and stuff.

Peach Buzz: Best of 2008

by Richard Eldredge, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Kookiest fund-raiser: In August, Atlanta playwright Topher Payne convinced actor pals Greg Morris, DeWayne Morgan and Joey Ellington to work for free and don drag for “Golden Girls Live!” at Onstage Atlanta benefiting AID Atlanta. Said Payne: “The frightening thing is that in drag as Bea Arthur I’m more mannish than I am dressed as myself.”

Something Fishy at the Dixie

by Laura Bond, The Ruston Daily Reader

Elaborate costumes and scenery can be breathtaking accessories for a theatrical production. They are not, however, essential to creating an interesting, funny or believable show. Neither is having props or casting actors who look the parts. This was evident as national touring group Springer Theatricals presented the comedic play A Tuna Christmas on Tuesday evening at the Dixie Center for the Arts.

On a virtually unchanging set and holding make-believe cameras and pretending to gobble down snacks, two actors brought the story of a small, colorful, fictitious Texas town to life. Each actor played 11 characters, several of them female, which involved lightning-fast costume changes and drastic alterations to their posture, voices and personal gestures.

The production, co-written and directed by University of Alabama graduate Ed Howard, is one of several plays revolving around the eccentric characters in Texas’ third smallest city, including Greater Tuna, Red, White and Tuna and Tuna Does Vegas.

Among the characters of A Tuna Christmas is Bertha Bumiller, whose attempts to hold her family together as she copes with a rebellious son and unfaithful husband prompt audience members’ concern. Wearing a dark wig fixed in a bun, Georgia’s Jef Holbrook is convincing as a small-town housewife who refuses to dance because she’s Baptist.

Didi Snavely, a cigarette-smoking, raspy-voiced used-weapons shop owner played by author and actor Topher Payne, appeared to be an audience favorite. Talking about the importance of toting weapons during the holidays, this outspoken woman remarks, “Wouldn’t you rather shoot somebody than watch them run off with your new toaster? I would.” Vera Carp, a domineering, culturally insensitive snob also played by Payne, produced a lot of laughs as she created a holiday yard display with live sheep and pulled “dirty” words from the town’s production of A Christmas Carol, in her role as a member of the Smut Snatchers organization.

The show maintained the attention of an audience of hundreds that included commuters from Monroe. Barely five minutes passed without eruptions of laughter at the twisted depictions of southern living. At the close, the sea of onlookers got out of their seats for a standing ovation to recognize the hard work put into the two-man show.

"Tuna Christmas" Kicks Off Season of Holiday Plays

Topher Payne Plays 13 Roles in Single Performance

by Jim Farmer, Southern Voice

A trio of holiday-themed plays open within the next week, all written by gay men and all featuring gay actors in leading roles. Just before Atlanta sees long runs of “The Santaland Diaries” and “A Queer Carol,” the one-week run of “A Tuna Christmas,” the perennial favorite starring two actors who play a whole town of characters, stops in as part of a national tour.

Local playwright, actor and columnist Topher Payne is one of the two stars of “Tuna,” which opened locally on Nov. 19 and plays through Nov. 23 at ART Station in Stone Mountain. The show is the popular follow-up to “Greater Tuna,” taking place in the third smallest town in Texas. In this show, hell breaks loose as a community theater’s production of “A Christmas Carol” and the annual yard-decorating contest go awry.

Payne and his co-star Jef Holbrook play all 24 characters, and Payne portrays 13 of them — from a 10-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother. Approximately half of the characters are women. Although “Tuna” is considered a widely recognized as a two-man piece, Payne gives extra credit to two crew members.

“It’s really a four person show,” he says. “We have two dressers, and they deserve credit for dressing us, sometimes within seconds.”

Payne says the play’s humor hits a nerve with a wide audience.

“It’s not just about life in Texas or the South,” he says. “People know and recognize these people. Small towns are small towns.”

The Springer Opera House in Columbus is producing the tour.