Is 'Greater Tuna' the greatest? Picking the stage play or musical that explains Texas best
Does any particular stage play or musical tell us something essential about Texas?
I ask for a reason: Soon, the Think Texas column and newsletter will celebrate its fifth anniversary. That translates into some 250 stories about the state's people, places, history and culture.
In an attempt to define that culture, I've looked at the most exemplary Texas food, songs, movies, books, TV shows and other signs and symbols of our state. In every case, I've laid out the territory, and you, the readers, have responded with endorsements and explanations.
Today's question is not as obvious as some of the previous ones: Does one stage play or musical about Texas reveal how we see ourselves? Let me know at mbarnes@gannett.com.
Historically, Texans have always staged performances, from the Native American mitotes (dances) and Spanish-language religious plays, to horseback actors, amateur theatricals and full professional companies trundling across the state on transcontinental tours. Then, in the post-World War II years, mighty resident theaters flourished in the cities, as did fertile alternative performance scenes. They continue to do so today.
Yet just as some Texans think that "history is something that happened somewhere else," even fervid theatergoers tend to think that "theater is a cultural asset that best thrives somewhere else."
I've selected some examples of theater about Texas that might spark a dissenting discussion on that subject.
Laughing at ourselves through 'Greater Tuna'
If you wanted to bottle small-town Texas, while refining all its peculiarities into the biggest laughs, perhaps the purest product would be "A Tuna Christmas," the best of the "Greater Tuna" tales. Born as improvised Austin party skits, the loosely structured "Greater Tuna" grew into an alternative theater phenomenon, followed by tours of the state's biggest and grandest theaters, with a village of characters made flesh by Jaston Williams and Joe Sears, who also penned much of the series.
The second show, "A Tuna Christmas," tightened the story, deepened the characters, and gave audiences, now accustomed to its loving, yet razor-sharp parodies of small-town life, a chance to openly giggle and guffaw at the denizens tiny Tuna, Texas. When it played Broadway, Sears was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. The following two scripts in the series, however, did not live up to the project's promise.
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Independently, Williams and Sears have gone on to explore other aspects of Southwestern culture, as well as plays that have little to do with Texas, but those of us who remember the waves of love and joy that visited each sold-out performance of "A Tuna Christmas" will count ourselves lucky to have been there — and to understand our state just a bit better.
The exquisite plays of Horton Foote
There are few things as perfect as a Horton Foote play. The son of Wharton, Texas, had just the right ear for dialogue, a rock-solid sense of Texas — or other Southern — settings, and the empathy to see into the hearts of his otherwise ordinary characters. In part because of the movie version starring Academy Award-winner Geraldine Page, his best-known drama is "The Trip to Bountiful," which was restaged decades later with Cicely Tyson in the lead role.
Foote's "The Young Man From Atlanta" won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize, and, of course, he picked up Oscars for "To Kill A Mockingbird' and "Tender Mercies," but the core of his work remains the short-ish plays, grouped in series such as "The Orphans' Home Cycle," set in fictional Harrison, Texas, which stands in for his hometown Wharton.
One of the great privileges of my career — and of my life — was to spend an afternoon with Foote at his Wharton childhood home. The walls were covered with pictures of his ancestors, who ended up as characters in his plays, and each of his anecdotes he shared that day could have been conceived as a ephemeral scene for the stage.
Musical high jinx: 'The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas'
It was an unlikely topic: A rural brothel near La Grange closed down by a crusading Houston TV reporter and a side-stepping Texas governor. The material turned into Broadway gold thanks to the creative Texas team behind it, which included director Tommy Tune, songwriter Carol Hall, and playwrights Peter Masterson and Larry L. King. A West Texas journalist and author with a biting wit, King went on to write more Texas plays without as much success, although the "The Night Hank Williams Died" deserves to be staged again.
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The movie version of "Whorehouse" with Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds does a fair job of translating the Texan soul of the stage show to the screen, but the less said about the ill-fated Broadway sequel, "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public," the better. Little known fact: A post-Broadway staging of the original musical at Houston's Tower Theater, not far from where Tune had attended Lamar High School, led to a profitable tour associated with the founding of Pace Theatricals, which morphed into today's top purveyor of Broadway tours.
'A Texas Trilogy': Rolling into a regional trend
During the 1960s, '70s and '80s, while Texas novels and screenplays multiplied, various writers tried their hands at introducing Texas plays to wider audiences. Among the most successful in terms of attracting national attention was Preston Jones, whose "A Texas Trilogy" included "The Oldest Living Graduate," "Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander," and "The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia," which were produced in tandem in Washington, D.C. and New York City.
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Among the other contenders from this time were Jack Heifner's "Patio/Porch" and hugely popular "Vanities," James McLure's "Lone Star" and "Laundry and Bourbon," Mary Rohde's "Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home" and Oliver Hailey's "Who's Happy Now?" Scripts from this era are collected neatly in "Texas Plays," edited by William B. Martin (SMU Press).
Two that followed this thematic scheme were Edward Graczyk's "Come Back to the Five and Ten, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" and Mark Harelik's "The Immigrant."
Titles alone give you a hint that these playwrights genuinely attempted to tap into Texas history and culture. Did they succeed? Will these plays endure? Time will tell.
'Texas!' and the outdoor theater movement
The first dramas of ancient Greece were performed out of doors in theaters carved from hillsides. Many of the outdoor theaters built in this country since the 1930s, when they were seen as populist answers to elitist urban theater, share a similar form with those Greek amphitheaters.
In Texas, the open-air theater movement was stymied by age-old challenges, such as heat and humidity. Oh, people attended the shows, especially if they were free. Still, the experience was usually less than ideal.
The longest running such show is "Texas," which tells of early settler days in the Panhandle, and is performed each summer under the stars in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Unlike other open-air pageants in Texas, such as "Lone Star" in Galveston, this one benefits from geography. Not much humidity — or many mosquitos — in the dry Panhandle. Another dry-climate winner: "Viva! El Paso," staged in the McKelligon Canyon Amphitheater.
As theater, are they accurate Texas history? Let's just say they are one sort of Texas history, which in itself is instructive.
Glimmers of deeper waters
Among the plays and musicals I've seen that pierced through the surfaces of Texas culture, I'd start with several about bigger-than-life political personalities: Holland Taylor's "Ann," Margaret Engel and Allison Engel's "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins" and Robert Schenkkan's prize-winning matched pair about LBJ, "All The Way" and "The Great Society," all staged magnificently at Zach Theatre in Austin.
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If I think about it long enough, dozens of titles emerge, but I'll leave you with a few bread crumbs: Steve Moore's lyrical "Nightswim" about Texas authors J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek and Walter Prescott Webb, Eugene Lee's "East Texas Hot Links," Raúl Castillo's "Knives and Other Sharp Objects" and Terrence McNally's "Corpus Christi," which is not about the "Sparkling City by the Sea," but rather a once controversial drama transfers the story of Jesus and his gay apostles to the Texas coast.
Please add your insights.
Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@gannett.com. Sign up for the free weekly digital newsletter, Think, Texas, at statesman.com/newsletters, or at the newsletter page of your local USA Today Network pape
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: 'Greater Tuna,' Horton Foote, 'Little Whorehouse' tell us about Texas
