Priscilla Richardson

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Thanksgiving came early this year, and now so does Christmas. No, not the actual day itself. However, Tony Georgetti and Eagle Rock's Michael Brickler will bring you holiday laughter with their performance of "A Tuna Christmas" starting Nov. 29. Since the play's run ends Dec. 8, you'd better make plans soon to see it.

You already know Buchanan's Georgetti from this summer. He's the filmmaker who also appeared in "From Sea to Shining Sea." (You read about him here, Aug. 10.) Brickler, while not new to the Attic Productions stage -- you may have seen him in "The God Committee" -- now takes half the roles in this two-man, 22-role comedy.

The play celebrates life in Tuna, the second smallest town in Texas. According to director Katerina Yancey, folks there "are getting ready for Christmas. They have to deal with the Christmas phantom who goes around playing pranks like unscrewing the light bulbs on town Christmas trees. And [deal with] the question if the electric company will turn the lights out on the theater before they can get their play on the boards."

"Tuna" also features 17 Christmas trees, moved and switched about, stealthily they hope, by Freda Wood and Marsha Campbell.

Fincastle's Yancey "majored in theater in college but got burnt out," she said. She worked 20 years as an office manager followed by her current job as an administrative assistant at Long & Foster in Daleville. Her daughter, now 18, got her interested in Attic shows about eight years ago. After a few small roles playing "some pretty crazy people," she assisted Geraldine Lawson in directing. "She asked if anybody was interested in directing. She was directing them all and wanted time for development. I had a ball with it. This is my fourth show as director."

Brickler, 45, good looking and with a ready laugh, came here about four years ago via his hometown of Tallahassee, Fla., then Seattle and Portland, Ore. He got into acting when in college through a girlfriend in Tallahassee. She "let me feel that I should do it," he said. Out West, he got a degree in computers and did a lot of theater. He even got paid for acting sometimes.

What brought him here? The family land in Eagle Rock. Nobody else in his family either would or could live on it following the death of the family's caretaker, his bagpipe-playing uncle, Donald Anderson. So Brickler moved here, found a job -- at VMI's information technology department -- and started acting again.

He notes one difference between his former life and now. The long rehearsal hours at night can't even start until he tends what he laughingly calls his petting zoo: horses, peacocks, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, giant goldfish, a dog and three cats.

"When I come home from work, I have to feed the animals" before going anywhere -- even to something as important as a rehearsal.

These acres in Eagle Rock came into his family when his great-great-grandfather, who had been a slave working on the property, bought them following the Civil War. The land came down to his grandfather, now deceased. He left it to his grandchildren, of which Brickler is one. His uncle maintained the usufruct tradition, celebrating the right to the fruit of the land without actually owning it. Brickler carries on the family tradition with his own usufruct party each year. Another family tradition he keeps calls for acting. His uncle Anderson was a devotee of Shakespeare's plays and poetry, so during each celebration Brickler sees to it that some bits of one or the other are performed.

For now, Attic Productions is helping you with your own celebrations. Just get there in time so you can laugh Christmas in with those Tuna folks.

"A Tuna Christmas," play by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard, performances are Thursday and Nov. 30, and Dec. 1, 6, 7, and 8 at 7:30 p.m., with Saturday matinees at 2:30 p.m. At the D. Geraldine Lawson Center for the Performing Arts at 7490 Roanoke Road, also known as U.S. 220, Fincastle, just south of town. Cost: $12 adults, $10 seniors and students. For reservations or more information, call 473-1001.