Talk about a trailer-trash move.
You might be a redneck if … you break into an abandoned trailer park and strip its homes of their siding, windows, doors and cabinets just so you can have authentic set pieces for your little musical skit about life in a trailer park.
OK, so Alex Ryer and partner Gary Schnell didn’t exactly “break in” to the mobile-home park near Greeley. “But we do have connections,” said Ryer, producer and star of “The Great American Trailer Park Musical,” a cheeky, bighearted and a little bit vulgar musical making its big-buzz regional premiere tonight at the New Denver Civic Theatre.
Let’s just say Ryer, one of the enduring leading ladies in Colorado theater (“Pure Piaf”), didn’t have to look far to find her set pieces. She and Schnell formed the Nile Company in 2002 to buy and sell used mobile homes as a side business. So they have friends in low places.
“Awesome, isn’t it?” said David Nehls, who co-created “Trailer Park” and wrote the music.
It’s been called “South Park” meets “Desperate Housewives.” It’s the story of a woman who hasn’t left her trailer in 20 years after her young son’s kidnapping. One day, a stripper blows into the trailer next door and tempts her toll-collector husband.
So you’ve got your adultery, agoraphobia, spray cheese, road kill, hysterical pregnancy, a broken electric chair (more on that later), strippers, flan and disco. You know, what every good musical should be about. It’s “hot pants and heels in a double-wide trailer.”
Nehls, who wrote the musical as a lark with pal Betsy Kelso while they toured “The Rocky Horror Musical” through Europe, is satisfied with the heady suggestion that surely he’s now the August Wilson of the American musical theater – for he too is championing a downtrodden class that’s rarely heard from on our stages.
“Clearly,” Nehls said with a gut-busting laugh. “You know what? I’ll take that, because this really is an untapped area of our society, at least in the musical theater. We’ve seen enough of the Upper East Side. We’ve seen enough period pieces from the 1800s. Let’s see something about what’s happening now in our culture.”
“Trailer Trash,” along with “Altar Boyz,” was the breakout hit of the 2004 New York Musical Theatre Festival. It lasted just two months off-Broadway despite a strong cast including Shuler Hensley, Leslie Kritzer and Orfeh, but it has since played in 12 cities, extending or breaking box-office records in each, Nehls said.
The reason, Nehls says in all seriousness, is that the catchphrase here is “trailer park” – not “trailer trash.”
“We’re talking about people who are very proud of where they live,” he said. “Sure, it’s outrageous and it’s got some blue moments, but it’s really very uplifting.”
This story could take place anywhere, but it takes place in the Armadillo Acres trailer park in Starke, Fla. That’s where Aileen Wuornos (“Monster”) was electrocuted.
It’s the kind of place Ryer sees a lot of in northern Colorado, where mobile-home parks have names like Elysian Fields and Inspiration Valley.
“It’s such a culture of choice,” she said. “It’s kind of a libertine philosophy where you’re not tied down to some bank that’s taking all that interest from you. It’s a pioneer feeling.”
It’s ironic, she added, that while her clients savor the ability to pick up and move at any time, many families live in the same mobile-home park for generations. “Something about not having a foundation, literally, gives them this illusion of freedom,” she said.
These are optimistic people, she added, “living lives that in many ways are not so optimistic.” And the homes are often better maintained than those that do come with foundations.
The pride they take in where they live is apparent, Nehls said, in the opening song of a score that runs the gamut from pop country ballads to R&B, rockabilly and Lynyrd Skynyrd- influenced Southern rock.
“It’s called ‘This Side of the Tracks,”‘ he said of the opener. “Is it the right side of the tracks, or is it wrong side? Well, it’s neither because this is simply where we are.”
Ryer saw the show at that 2004 festival and knew immediately she wanted to introduce it to Denver. So when she and Nehls were cast together in the Arvada Center’s “Souvenir” last year, it seemed like a sign.
Together, they have assembled a blue-chip crew including director Kitty Skillman-Hilsabeck and actors Brooke Wilson, Craig Lundquist, Robin Thompson, Sharon Kay White, Amy Board and Patric Case.
“I think Denver is going to love this show, just as it’s been loved everywhere it’s played, because we can all relate,” Ryer said. “I think we are all, in a way, white trash in America. We’re all mongrels, and we all are a combination of a lot of different bloodlines.”
There you have it: An American genetic predisposition to silliness … and siding.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Great American Trailer Park Musical”
MUSICAL | New Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive | Written by David Nehls and Betsy Kelso | Directed by Kitty Skilman-Hilsabeck |Starring Alex Ryer, Craig Lundquist and Brooke Wilson | THROUGH SEPT. 23 | 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; | 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays | $39.50 | 303-309-3773, 866-464-2626 King Soopers, or .
