Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

 
Elijah Alexander starred as Jack Tanner in California Shakespeare Theater’s Man and Superman last summer. This year he’s starring in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. Photo by Kevin Berne

He’s right on time for his interview – early even – and he’s in character.

“Oscar Wilde said that punctuality is a thief of time, and I’m trying to grapple with that,” says the ever-on-time Elijah Alexander. “People say you should always be fashionably late, but that’s impossible for me. Don’t know why. I’m always early. But right now I’m turning over a new leaf. Being late could stir things up a bit.”

Alexander is preparing for his third summer in the Orinda hills as a cast member of a California Shakespeare Theater show. Two years ago we were introduced to him in Amy Freed’s Restoration Comedy. Last summer audiences fell in love with him in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. And this week he opens in Wilde’s An Ideal Husband playing a very Wilde-like Lord Goring.

After last summer’s Shaw marathon, which Alexander calls “to date, the greatest challenge of my career,” the actor is settling into his first-ever Wilde play. Like last summer, his director is Jonathan Moscone, Cal Shakes’ artistic director.

“Working with Jon last summer was the beginning of a very, for me, important working relationship,” Alexander says. “The Wilde is interesting because it is so unlike Shaw. I usually play the rogue. This guy is the mediator. He’s utterly honest but in an unassuming way. He’s less bold and less brash than the characters I usually play. He’s taking a backseat while others drive the action, speculating and commenting on a lot of it. He’s the one the other characters come to for support. It requires an ease…I mean, the guy is effete. Essentially, he’s the Oscar Wilde of the play.”

Born and raised in Michigan, Alexander set out to be in broadcast journalism with a side interest in criminal justice. Then, at the University of Michigan, an acting class changed the course of his life.

“I was a junior, and that class was a monumental moment for me,” Alexander says. “I decided to get trained and make acting my life. Got into Yale for grad school. It was all new to me. I came out of grad school having done 50 plays. I was so hungry for work I was constantly doing three plays at a time for three years. Then I moved to New York and got into the real world, where you’re lucky if you do maybe two plays a year.”

Busy most of the time – even in the real world – Alexander is between home bases. He has spent the last five years in Los Angeles doing the movie and TV thing. His biggest claim to fame is a small but juicy role in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the movie that brought Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt together.

“My first movie involved me working with Angelina Jolie for a month,” Alexander recalls. “I had US Weekly calling me, trying to convince me that gossiping about those people would actually be good for my career.”

After the ups and downs of L.A., Alexander says he’s looking for a new artistic home base. After Ideal Husband closes he’s off to the Utah Shakespeare Festival. After that, he’s thinking about settling in the Bay Area or Ashland, Ore., home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the country’s largest resident company of actors.

“Earlier this year, the writers’ strike decimated L.A. because everyone was so desperate for work,” Alexander says. “There was such a sense of fear, even in the audition room. I realized I’m going to go where the meaningful work is. We attribute meaning to things, so if it means I’m have to go on the road again, I will. The road brought me to here and now.”

An Ideal Husband previews today (July 2) through Friday (July 4) and opens Saturday (July 5). The show continues through July 27 at the Bruns Amphitheater just off the Gateway/Shakespeare Festival exit on Highway 24, one mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel in Orinda. Tickets are $32-$62. Call 510-548-9666 or visit www.calshakes.org for information.

For more of my interview with Elijah Alexander, visit my Examiner.com theater page here.

Watch Cal Shakes’ An Ideal Husband trailer here.

Variety reports that Andrew Lippa’s musical version of The Addams Family is moving full steam ahead.

In a closed reading in August, Gomez will be played by Nathan Lane (not often you think of Lane in a role once inhabited — onscreen — by Raul Julia) and Morticia will be played by Bebe Neuwirth. How perfect is that? From Lilith Crane to Velma Kelly to Morticia Addams. Seems logical to me.

The book is by the Jersey Boys boys Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman, and direction and design comes from Improbable Theatre founders Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Shockheaded Peter, which Bay Area audiences saw at American Conservatory Theater).

Variety says the show is aiming for the 2009-10 season.

Here’s that catchy “Addams Family” TV theme:

Tony Award-winning Minneapolis-based theater company Theatre de la Jeune Lune will cease to exist as we know it. And those of us in the Bay Area know it thanks to Jeune Lune’s frequent collaborations with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The company was just here with its gorgeous production of Figaro, and now comes news that there will be “a planned significant reduction in artistic and administrative staff, effective July 31, 2008.” That last comes from the letter posted online by Jeune Lune board president Bruce Neary.

Artistic director Dominque Serrand (in the photo above, a scene from Figaro, which Serrand directed as well) also posted a letter explaining that for its first 14 years, Jeune Lune was an itinerant company, then, in 1992, the company purchased and renovated a warehouse space, creating their own theater. Here’s what Serrand had to say about that:

…we are faced with an excruciating decision. With the organization burdened by mounting and unmanageable debt, the Board of Directors has voted to put Jeune Lune’s home up for sale. After much soul searching and extensive fundraising and debt management efforts, we have determined it to be the only prudent and fiscally responsible choice. What has been acclaimed, as one of the most striking and unique theatre spaces in the country will go dark. It is a huge loss, a loss for us, for all of the artists who work with us, for our audience and for the community at large, both locally and nationally.

He goes on to describe the company’s last 30 years as “amazing” and says they never “sought nor desired to be an institution.” Rather, Jeune Lune attempted to exist in a playground in which to ” gather with other adventurous souls and create the unimaginable.”

Here’s more from Serrand:

The theatrical experience is an event truly of the moment — immediate, fleeting and ephemeral. Yet in the space of that moment something takes place that is transformative to the human spirit and remains indelible in our memory — the stuff that dreams are made of, the stuff we carry with us forever. We hope you will treasure well the memory of Jeune Lune.

For information visit www.jeunelune.org

In terms of Broadway composers, Stephen Schwartz is up there with Sondheim and Lloyd Webber as one of the latter-day saviors of modern musical theater.

From his first show, Godspell, right up through his most recent hit, Wicked, Schwartz has been up, down and in between, but his work has been constant. Some of that work has been for movies as well. He won Oscars for his work on Disney’s Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and earlier this year, three of the songs he and Alan Menken wrote for Disney’s Enchanted were nominated for Academy Awards.

At 60, and with Wicked showing no signs of slowing down (the national tour hits the Bay Area yet again in February 2009), Schwartz doesn’t need creative projects, but a long-gestating revue/musical – we’ll call it a revusical, though Schwartz himself calls it a “musical scrapbook” – is coming up for air once again. Way back in the mid-’90s, Michael Scheman and David Stern, who were then both working on one of Broadway’s most notorious flops, Nick & Nora, approached Schwartz about using songs from his existing catalogue and turning them into something more than a revue – a book musical that told a story through songs and gave the songs – some familiar, some obscure – a new spin.

“They had a lot of down time working on Nick & Nora,” Schwartz explains on the phone from the TheatreWorks rehearsal hall in Mountain View. “They had the idea of taking my songs and putting them into a new story framework. I said it would be impossible for me to allow that. I’d never seen it done successfully and frequently seen it done unsuccessfully. But I said do a reading, I’ll come and we’ll see. They did, and I have to say, they had some interesting takes. For various reasons, nothing went much further. A few years later, the thing reared its head.”

The show, called Snapshots, saw incarnations in Norfolk, Va., and more recently at Seattle’s Village Theatre in 2005, but the TheatreWorks version that begins previews today (June 18) and opens Saturday, June 21, is even more fully revised and includes songs from Wicked.

Schwartz insists that this is not a revue because it does indeed tell a story (penned by Stern) about a middle-age couple whose marriage is on the brink of collapse. A box of old photos sends the couple reeling into the past. The structure allows six actors to play the couple at various ages. Schwartz thinks the concept really works this time around.

“I’ve seen this tried before, and the script and the songs are inconsistent in both lyrics and tone,” Schwartz explains. “The songs were clearly not meant to fulfill dramatic moments in this particular story. It always seemed like a shotgun marriage. When I saw what was being developed for this story in terms of interesting relationships, I said if you’re really going to do this, the lyrics ought to be revised and songs ought to be rearranged or put into medleys to tell the story properly. That’s what we’ve done. This is truly a hybrid in almost the true botanical nature of the word because it yields a strange, exotic flower for fruit.”

Schwartz estimates that all the songs – most from his shows and movies, with only the title song freshly penned – have been about 50 percent rewritten, which could irk his fans.

“I can see how audiences will either be intrigued by it and think it’s cool or some will say it’s too weird and that they’re not accustomed to hearing certain songs with new words,” he says. “It’s adventurous and challenging, which makes it fun.”

Admitting that some might consider it sacrilege to re-write songs like “Meadowlark” from The Baker’s Wife or “Popular” from Wicked, Schwartz says he relishes revisiting and revising his own work. In some cases, there are only a few lyrical changes, a verse here, a line here. In others, it’s the same tune with entirely new words.

“If, for instance, you know `Lion Tamer’ from The Magic Show, you’re suddenly going to hear words you’ve never heard before,” Schwartz says. “Other songs, like `Popular’ are pretty much the same except for a few words but in a totally different situation. If people are willing to get their heads turned around a little bit, then it’s fun. If that’s hard for them to do, it will just be annoying or disturbing.”

The last time Schwartz was in the Bay Area was to fine tune the world premiere of Wicked. He was so busy then that he didn’t deign to chat with journalists.

“In all honesty, the San Francisco run couldn’t have been better for us,” he says. “The show was well enough received that no one was panicking or feeling it was a disaster – no throwing of bathwater or babies. It was clear there was work to be done and revisions to be made in the book and the score. The critical community was, frankly, very helpful to us. We learned a lot from the reviews, which were honest and constructive in the aggregate, unlike New York, where the critics make up their minds before they come to the theater. It’s not just the negativity the critics express but their corruption.”

TheatreWorks, thankfully, is far from that critical crowd. Schwartz says he had enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the company and its founding artistic director, Robert Kelley, who is directing Snapshots. Schwartz even remembers – barely – a previous attempt at a Schwartz musical revue done at TheatreWorks in the late ’70s or early ’80s, but he can’t quite remember the name.

His big project at the moment is an opera commissioned by Opera Santa Barbara based on the movie Séance on a Wet Afternoon, a 1964 British film about a psychic who kidnaps a child to “prove” her abilities. The opera is slated to have its premiere in December 2009.

And for Wicked fans who were hoping that Schwartz and team might turn the book’s sequel, Son of a Witch, into a musical, don’t get your hopes up.

“I’m not big on sequels,” Schwartz says. “I don’t quite get why other than for economic incentive, they’re necessary. We told that story. I can understand the perspective of Gregory Maguire (the book’s author) about writing a sequel. I encouraged the writing of the sequel and another. I think he should make it a trilogy.”

Snapshots continues through July 13 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, corner of Castro and Mercy streets, Mountain View. Tickets are $26-$64. Call 650-903-6000 or visit www.theatreworks.org for information.

Sure the Bay Area is brimming with homegrown theatrical talent. But there’s always room for a few visitors.

Now here’s something intriguing: a British theater company called 19;29 is setting up shop at The Mosser Hotel to produce the late Sarah Kane’s 1995 work Blasted.

with tabloid hack Ian and epileptic Cate for a radical reassessment of Sarah Kane’s seminal 1995 work Blasted. Kane, who died in 1999, is most famous for her highly charged piece 4.48 Psychosis (seen here at Cal Performances).

Dealing with rape and brutality, Blasted is considered by some to be a modern classic for its unflinching depiction of “the depths of humanity and the personal impact of war.”

Performed in the intimacy of a hotel suite, 19;29’s transatlantic cast, according to a press release, “seeks to sear Kane’s dystopic vision onto the audience’s consciousness. The physical immediacy of the action has a stomach-churning intensity, which cannot fail to provoke thought and debate as civilization and barbarity collide before your very eyes.”

Sounds intense. Check it out beginning Thursday, June 19 and continuing through June 25 at The Mosser Hotel, 54 Fourth St., San Francisco. Shows are at 3, 5 7 and 9 p.m. Tickes are $19. Visit www.theatrebayarea.org. The show is presented in association with the Exit Theatre. Also check out www.nineteentwentynine.co.uk.

But wait, there’s more. A week or so ago I went to see The Group at The Climate Theatre in which the audience is seated, encounter group style, in a circle. In such an arrangement you can’t help talking to your neighbors. Mine happened to be visiting from Canada, and when they learned I was a sort-of member of the press, they lit up and told me about a great group to be on the lookout for when they came to San Francisco.

Well, here they are:

The New Conservatory Theatre is presenting the San Francisco premiere of 2boys.tv, the darlings of the is proud to present the San Francisco premiere of 2boys.tv, darlings of the Montréal cult cabaret scene. The evening promises to deliver “a riotous evening of absurd, eclectic, and multimedia drag performance.

Here’s more about the show: This internationally acclaimed duo brings to San Francisco their unique repertoire of epic multimedia performance, which aims to dazzle and provoke with political and poetic vigor. 2boys.tv incorporates an inimitable blend of burlesque, video projections, opera, show tunes, and old films in a two-part evening specifically designed for The New Conservatory Theatre Center, featuring: Purée and Zona.

In Purée, 2boys present and unpredictable romp into the queer politics of marriage, religion, displacement, and liberation: With musical sources as varied as Maria Callas, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland and Mae West, Purée presents pointed commentary with a spoonful of sugar, drag cabaret that is both visually extraordinary and humorously delivered.

Zona combines disparate elements of Alfred Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn in an act that follows an “actress” as she struggles to find her genuine voice, whilst descending into madness. A journey through accusation, guilt, amnesia, and regret is constructed out of sampled audio clips from classic films about the theatre, and about the anxiety over the roles we play on stage and in life.

The show previews August 6 – 8, opens August 9 and runs through August 31. All performances are at The New Conservatory Theatre Center (Decker Theatre), l25 Van Ness Ave. near Market St. in San Francisco. Tickets range from $22 - $34. Call 415-861-8972 or visit www.nctcsf.org.

Visit 2boys.tv for a lot of fun stuff.

For the last four days I’ve been in Ashland, Ore., reviewing shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for the San Francisco Chronicle (more on that later), and while the Tonys were on Sunday night, I was at the opening of a new musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Of course I’ll watch the whole awards show on TiVo when I get home, but I was able to catch glimpses here and there (thanks to the spotty www.tonyawards.com online coverage), and of course I couldn’t wait to find out the winners.

I must say I’m disappointed that Passing Strange only one award (for best book of a musical). I guess I’m feeling territorial because the show had its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Still, it’s better than nothing. Here’s what co-creator and star Stew had to say about his win:

“Music is something that comes easy to me, and I’ve received numerous accolades for my songs - but to be honored for my writing means a whole hell of a lot, especially when it comes from theatre people for whom words really mean something. Those words took shape at Berkeley Rep, a place that makes space for people like me to take risks and try out things that theatre isn’t used to seeing. We loved working there, and we miss that Berkeley scene.”

More on the Tonys later. In the meantime, here’s a complete list of winners:

Play (and playwrights): “August: Osage County” (Tracy Letts).

Musical: “In the Heights.”

Book-Musical: “Passing Strange” (Stew).

Original Score (music and/or lyrics): “In the Heights” (Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda).

Revival-Play: “Boeing-Boeing.”

Revival-Musical: “South Pacific.”

Actor-Play: Mark Rylance, “Boeing-Boeing.”

Actress-Play: Deanna Dunagan, “August: Osage County.”

Actor-Musical: Paulo Szot, “South Pacific.”

Actress-Musical: Patti LuPone, “Gypsy.”

Featured Actor-Play: Jim Norton, “The Seafarer.”

Featured Actress-Play: Rondi Reed, “August: Osage County.”

Featured Actor-Musical: Boyd Gaines, “Gypsy.”

Featured Actress-Musical: Laura Benanti, “Gypsy.”

Direction-Play: Anna D. Shapiro, “August: Osage County.”

Direction-Musical: Bartlett Sher, “South Pacific.”

Choreography: Andy Blankenbuehler, “In the Heights.”

Orchestrations: Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman, “In the Heights.”

Scenic Design-Play: Todd Rosenthal, “August: Osage County.”

Scenic Design-Musical: Michael Yeargen, “South Pacific.”

Costume Design-Play: Katrina Lindsay, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”

Costume Design-Musical: Catherine Zuber, “South Pacific.”

Lighting Design-Play: Kevin Adams, “The 39 Steps.”

Lighting Design-Musical: Donald Holder, “South Pacific.”

Sound Design-Play: Mic Pool, “The 39 Steps.”

Sound Design-Musical: Scott Lehrer, “South Pacific.”

Previously announced:

Regional Theater Tony Award: Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

Special Tony Award: Robert Russell Bennett.

Lifetime Achievement Award: Stephen Sondheim.

The 2008-09 season hasn’t even begun and already changes are afoot.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre announced yesterday that it will postpone David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, which was to have concluded the season.

Here’s from the press release: ” The theatre hopes to present the show in the fall of 2009 and then tour its production to other cities. (Tony) Taccone is now selecting a new script to conclude the 2008/09 season.”

The same press release — in much bigger and brighter language — also announced that Danny Hoch’s solo show Taking Over will tour. The Taccone-directed show, which had its world premiere in January, will head to Los Angeles (Mark Taper Forum, Jan. 23 – Feb. 22, 2009), Montreal (July 8, Just for Laughs Festival) and New York City (Public Theatre, fall 2008). This is the third work (after Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel and Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak’s Brundibar) that Taccone has sent to New York in as many years and the fifth in Berkeley Rep history.

Said Taccone: “I’m proud of this piece and pleased that it will travel. By examining gentrification in his own neighborhood, Danny is grappling with issues that affect cities everywhere. Audiences at Berkeley Rep loved it because of his insight and humor, and I look forward to sharing it with a wider community.”

For information visit www.berkeleyrep.org.

This Sunday, the Tony Awards will be handed out.
Here’s what you need to know (and get busy organizing your Tony party — we’ve got to get those dismal ratings out of the basement so CBS will continue broadcasting the darn things).

For the first time, there will be pre-ceremony Tony Concert chock full of juicy musical numbers from all the nominated shows. In the Bay Area the concert will be at 1 p.m. Sunday, June 15 on KPIX-TV. Mario Lopez (currently playing Zach in A Chorus Line) hosts, and we’ll see numbers from 10 musicals: A Catered Affair, Cry-Baby, Grease, Gypsy, In The Heights, Passing Strange, South Pacific, Sunday in the Park with George, The Little Mermaid and Xanadu—on stage at the Allen Room at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, with its spectacular, floor-to-ceiling views of Central Park South visible to viewers of the telecast.

Nominees who perform on the program include Laura Benanti (Gypsy), Daniel Breaker and Stew (Passing Strange), Kerry Butler (Xanadu), Daniel Evans (Sunday in the Park with George), Faith Prince (A Catered Affair) and Loretta Ables Sayre (South Pacific).

“We’ve tried very hard not to cannibalize anything that will be on the actual Tony telecast, but just to whet people’s appetites for June 15,” says The Broadway League’s Jan Friedlander Svendsen, who is an executive producer of the special. “We purposely didn’t want this in costume, we didn’t want big production numbers. We wanted it to feel very intimate. And we wanted to have those up-close-and-personal profiles.”

Actor nominees who are interviewed during the pre-Tony telecast include Laurence Fishburne, who talks about his role as a Supreme Court justice in Thurgood, and Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, who reveal a touching story from the casting of their revival of Macbeth. Steppenwolf Theatre Company members Laurie Metcalf (November) and Deanna Dunagan, Amy Morton and Rondi Reed from the Best Play nominee August: Osage County celebrate the success of Steppenwolf-ers on Broadway this season—the roster also includes Martha Plimpton and Kevin Anderson—who all told represent six different Broadway shows.

“One of the issues with the Tonys is, often times, not all of our nominees are as well known as, say, Oscar nominees,” says Svendsen. “It’s great to let audiences be exposed to some of those who aren’t as well known. It’s kind of like the Olympics. Many of those athletes aren’t as famous, and one of my favorite parts of watching the Games is getting to know those athletes from a human interest side. Then I have an emotional connection with them and a more rooting interest in who’s going to win.”

The Awards, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg (thank God someone on “The View” cares about theater since Rosie O’Donnell’s departure) begin at 8 p.m. on TV, but watching the tape delay is so retro. Why not tune into the live Webcast? Past Tony winners Michael Cerveris and Julie White host. Log on to www.tonyawards.com for all the details.

On the broadcast, we’ll get musical numbers from all four of the Best Musical nominees (Cry-Baby, In The Heights, Passing Strange and Xanadu) and the four Best Musical Revival nominees (Grease, Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific).

Also represented will be three other new Broadway musicals: A Catered Affair, The Little Mermaid and The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein. And just for good measure, Rent and The Lion King will also make appearances.

Video memories from past Tony winners, clips from nominated shows and a whole lot more await you at www.tonyawards.com, your one-stop shop for Tony Award information.

To whet your appetite, here’s Passing Strange on “The View.”

Megan Hilty (left) as Glinda and Eden Espinosa as Elphaba from the original LA company of Wicked. Photo by Joan Marcus

Old friends, new winners mark 30th anniversary season

Carole Shorenstein Hays and Robert Nederlander’s new SHN/Best of Broadway season marks a milestone: 30 years of bringing Broadway to the Bay Area.

The new season, announced today, kicks off in February 2009 with a “third time’s the charm” production of Wicked, the monstrous hit musical that had its world premiere at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. This time around, the musical about the witches of Oz, will play the Orpheum Theatre.

In March of 2009, Grease is the word. This is the production directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall that got famous for being the first Broadway musical to cast its leads on national television (through the NBC show “Grease: You’re the One That I Want.” This is also the production that marries the original stage version with the movie version, so songs such as “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and “You’re the One That I Want” are included.

Things get exciting in April 2009 with a world premiere musical. Ever After, with a book by Marcy Heisler and Theresa Rebeck, music by Zina Goldrich and lyrics by Marcy Heisler, is directed by Doug Hughes (a Tony winner for Doubt). Ever After, which plays the Curran, is based on the 1998 movie starring Drew Barrymore and is a new twist on the Cinderella story by banishing all the bibbi-dee-bobbi-dee boo elements and focusing on a spirited young woman defying societal constraints.

In August of 2009, the theater scene gets hot with Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for drama. The Steppenwolf production (currently scorching Broadway) is directed by Anna D. Shapiro. The San Francisco production at the Curran Theatre kicks off the national tour.

A final show is yet to be named, but is described in press materials as a “Broadway blockbuster.” The show will be revealed, according to the Web site, in July.

Not part of the season but a “special attraction” is the umpteenth return of a Bay Area favorite: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. The show will run Nov. 26 through Jan. 4 at the Orpheum. Tickets go on sale Sept. 7.

For the new SHN/Best of Broadway season, subscriptions are $170 to $551. Call 415-551-2050 or 877-797-7827 or visit www.shnsf.com for information.

Listen to a podcast about the new SHN/Best of Broadway season here.

Joe Sears is new character Shot and Jaston Williams is Vera Carp in Tuna Does Vegas, the latest in what is now the Tuna Quartet, at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre. Photos by Brenda Ladd.

My first-ever San Francisco Chronicle story can be found in today’s Pink Section. It’s a feature on Tuna Does Vegas, the fourth in the Tuna Chronicles series, which comes to San Francisco’s Curran Theatre as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway series June 17-28. Check out the article here.

I talked to co-writer/stars Jaston Williams and Joe Sears, along with the usually-silent third partner, co-writer and director Ed Howard. I couldn’t get everything into an 800-word story, so here are some tasty Tuna leftovers.

Jaston Williams: “This one is sick even by our standards. The research was fun. I made three trips to Vegas, and that place just cracks me up. I had an extremely good time — within reason. My partner and I adopted a boy from China three years ago, and I took him to Vegas with me. We were in the shops at Caesars, where everything’s Roman, and there’s an FAO Schwartz with a giant Trojan Horse. I just couldn’t help it. I told the guy in the story that the Trojan Horse had nothing to do with ancient Rome. They didn’t like me looking down on their horse.

Joe Sears: I’m cooking up a batch of black-eyed peas. They’re healthy and delicious and Aunt Pearl knows how to cook ‘em. In fact, at the Central Market Cooking School here in Austin, I teach a class in Aunt Pearl’s Comfort Food. I dress up in my hat and dress and do that two or three times a year. You’re guaranteed good food.
I have been to Vegas a couple times in my life but before the big bang with the pirate ships and things like that. Vegas is a whole new thing. As Joe Bob says in the show, “It’s like Broadway without the intermission.” What I know about Vegas is that the people there have a great sense of humor. Like Texans, they can laugh at themselves. As long as the satire is good, funny and in good faith, they don’t mind.

Ed Howard: The heart of any Tuna show is the biggest part of it. Vegas doesn’t have a heart, and that’s the point. I think this one completes the story. We’re not taking ourselves serious for a moment. The message of the show is one that has been coming to me, and hopefully to us all: It’s time to stop being afraid and to enjoy. The best Greater Tuna could offer up back in the ’80s was a prayer for salvation early in the Reagan years. We’re so enamored of these characters. If that hadn’t happened, the show would’ve been a flash in the pan. The characters have taken over our lives, and we want to do them justice.

Jaston Williams: We started out satirizing the Moral Majority. What was satire in 1980 is the presidential cabinet today. It’s so scary. In the Reagan years, even these people were a joke. Now they got the good seats on the plane. Really terrifying. The new show doesn’t get too political, but they get their licks in. They all liked Huckabee, but he was awful liberal. When he said, “I’m a Christian but I don’t hate anybody,” that really cost him in Tuna. Years ago, we had lunch with Huckabee, believe it or not. We were playing Arkansas, and we had a nice lunch at the Governor’s Mansion. His wife’s the scary one. I wouldn’t mess with her if she had a gun. She’d been out getting her rifle license or something. She was nice, but we didn’t give her any lip.

Joe Sears: (above as Aunt Pearl Burras) I don’t want to jinx anything but Jason and I have been together longer than Laurel and Hardy. We’re what they call a long-lasting comedy team. We still have fun together and laugh together. We were babies in the ’70s having fun. Now we’re all about our families. He and his partner have a special-needs boy from China, and I’m helping raise my granddaughter, who’s about to be 13 — Becky Pearl. She was raised backstage. At intermission she’d put on my Aunt Pearl earrings. She’s well aware how crazy her grandpa is. I didn’t care as long as she grew up a liberal child. She turned out to be liberal and very religious. I love that — liberalism and a belief in God — and it’s right.

Ed Howard: I don’t like Vegas. I hate gambling. Jaston and I went out to Vegas and went to marriage parlors, toured casinos, walked the streets. Vegas is a satire of itself, which made it convenient for us. There’s nowhere tackier.

Jaston Williams: It’s amazing we’re all still together. It’s interesting that we’re closer now than we’ve been since the very beginning. We had to go through a lot of life. When you’re young you don’t imagine the kind of things you’ll have to deal with — they’re all somebody else’s issues. We’ve lost friends and family. I had a child from when I was young and lost him in an accident 10 years ago. We’ve gotten each other through hard times and good times. When you do live this long and experience this much, the petty stuff becomes obvious. We’ve all learned the difference between disappointment and tragedy. You put it in perspective. I’m grateful every day I’ve gone through life with these people. So many things could have changed — we could have done other things, but this is what we’ve chosen to do. It’s been a gas.

Tuna Does Vegas runs June 17-28 at the Curran Theatre, 465 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$75. Call 415-512-7770 or visit www.shnsf.com or www.ticketmaster.com for information.