GREATER TUNA!

Jeremy Lewis presents, for the Riverside Theatre, DAVID McLAUGHLIN and STEVEN MILLAR in GREATER TUNA!

by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard

DAVID McLAUGHLIN and STEVEN MILLAR starring in, quite possibly, one of the funniest American comedies you will ever have seen, with two NI actors playing 20 different roles between them!

The day in Tuna, the third smallest town in Texas, begins—as usual—with DJs Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie at the microphones of Radio OKKK, broadcasting at a big 275 watts (at least when they remember to turn the transmitter on).

Topping the headlines is the winning entry in the American Heritage Essay Contest, entitled “Human Rights, Why Bother?”

Then, Arles exits, and in comes Didi Snavely, proprietor of “Didi’s Used Guns”; she leaves and gives way to weatherman Harold Dean Lattimer: “We have this swarm of locusts that are headin’ our way from Louisiana, but we figure the dust will kill a lot of ’em, and the rest’ll probably get blown away or drown in this tropical storm that’s headin’ our way from the coast.”


And the comedy continues, from Petey Fisk of the Humane Society talking about the duck problem and Yippy, the Pet of the Week, to Phineas Blye, perpetual losing candidate for city council announcing he’s running again and revealing his plan to tax prisoners: “It would be easy, ’cause everyone knows where they are.”

And of course, a day isn’t complete without the high school football report from Coach Raymond Chassie, who explains why his football team lost 48-0: “We lost mainly because we couldn’t score.”

And so the day continues, as Tuna’s citizens parade across the stage in all their outrageous and irreverent glory, commenting on life, politics, and what makes them (and sometimes us) tick.

If this show doesn't make you laugh - and then laugh some more - there's no Justice in the world.......

DAVID McLAUGHLIN (Actor)

Trained at, and graduated from the Arden School of Theatre. Theatre credits include: Richard III in Richard III (Upstairs at the Gatehouse) Alarbus/Messenger in Titus Andronicus (Arcola Theatre), Melchior in Spring Awakening (UK Tour with Icarus Theatre Collective), Mercutio/Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet (UK Tour with Icarus Theatre Collective), Bonneface in The Replacement (UK Premier, Riverside Theatre), Lance Sussman in Die, Mommie, Die! (UK premier, Vertigo Theatre Productions). Since graduating David has worked in both fringe and professional theatre around the UK and Ireland. He is one of the founding members of Northern Irish based JTAF Theatre Company and has appeared in both the Irish premiers of Ordinary Days and Songs for a New World.



STEVEN MILLAR (Actor)

Steven, similarly, graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Central Lancashire, He is a founding member of local theatre company Just Tea and Friends. In his teens he has worked with companies such as Cahoots N.I & UAYD. In 2012 he took part in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in a children's musical based on the Peterman story. Steven was one of the Tutors in last year’s Acting Summer School in Riverside His dance career now has come to an end, although he still has a keen interest in hardcore street dance, so if anyone would like to have an urban dance off, please get in touch with him!



JEREMY LEWIS (Director)

Trained first as an actor and teacher of Speech and Voice at London Guildhall School of Music & Drama and then both at undergraduate and postgraduate level in English and Classics at the New University of Ulster. He has directed about 40 different productions over the last thirty years, (including all of Joe Orton's published plays, Coward's "Blithe Spirit", Arnold Ridley's "The Ghost Train", Ibsen's "Enemy of the People", Pinter's "The Homecoming" and GB Shaw's "Passion, Poison and Petrifaction") in Ireland and Scotland – and this, after "Arsenic and Old Lace", is only his second American comedy in all that time.