Genuinely silly, often funny and occasionally vulgar, “The Great American Trailer Park Musical” gathers momentum from one rollicking song to the next before climaxing in an original and wholly satisfactory twist. Stereotypical trailer-trash behavior is elevated to art in this appeal to narrowly targeted consumer groups at the New Denver Civic Theatre.
With media sponsorship from local morning-drive and country radio stations, the six-week scheduled run promises to pack ’em in, and they likely shall, judging from the opening-night DJ pep rally, the onstage antics, and the lusty response from key audience segments.
Set among the pink, chartreuse, turquoise and tangerine double-wides at Armadillo Acres trailer park in Stark, Fla., the story, as its occasional narration self-consciously notes, has a little something for everyone, including adultery, agoraphobia, beer swigging, chemical sniffing, teenage pregnancy and guns – truly an American blue-collar soap opera set to music.
The lively three-woman chorus – Linoleum, whose hubby is on death row at the state pen; Pickles, a 17-year old with hysterical pregnancy syndrome; and Betty, the chief gossip – explicate trailer park cultural imperatives while getting things rockin’ in “This Side of the Tracks.” We also are introduced to Norbert, a toll collector, his fear-ridden wife, Jeannie, and Pippi, an exotic dancer on the run from her ex-boyfriend, Duke.
Much like small-screen hits that celebrate mediocrity – “All in the Family,” “The Simpsons,” “Married With Children” and “South Park,” and the evening sudser “Desperate Housewives” – “Trailer Park” is as much a sociological primer as it is a potboiler.
A flashback to 1983 shows us Norbert as a high school jock who’s flunking geometry. He courts Jeannie, a math whiz, in “One Step Closer.” Norbert still flunks, but Jeannie gets pregnant, so they get married and move to a trailer, where they’ve been ever since. Craig Lund-
quist and Alex Ryer, two singers as talented as any you’ll ever hear, paint a touching tale of high-school romance settling into the humdrum of blue-collar routines.
Brooke Wilson turns up the heat as Pipi in the bluesy, punk- country-burlesque sendup “The Buck Stops Here,” replete with pole-dancing and gyrations that get Norbert’s (and everyone else’s) attention.
Soon, Norbert and Pipi are an item and Jeannie is distraught. Then, Patric Case’s hyper-metabolic Duke arrives on the scene and all bets are off. Case’s own version of Pipi’s strip-club bump and grind, “Road Kill,” is performed with equal relish and elicits an equally vocal response from the intended audience sectors: women and gay men.
The Nehls and Kelso songbook outdoes most rock musicals in range, and director Kitty Skillman Hilsabeck’s choreography is sharp while staying in character with the trailer park residents. Joseph J. Egan’s costumes and set playfully explore the kitsch themes in the downscale eclecticism of lower-middle-class America.
As Shakespeare showed over 400 years ago, while the classes may turn up their noses at each other, they behave in unmistakably similar patterns. Here’s a hilarious and naughty take on the everyday dramas of proletarian life, in which we find the same themes underlying such classics as “The Comedy of Errors” and “Oedipus Rex” aimed squarely at the groundlings.
Bob Bows also reviews theater for Variety, KUVO/89.3 FM and his own website, . Reach him at bbows@coloradodrama.com.
“The Great American Trailer Park Musical”
COMEDY | The New Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive | Music and lyrics by David Nehls; book by Betsy Kelso | Directed and choreographed by Kitty Skillman Hilsabeck | Musical direction by David Nehls | Starring Brooke Wilson, Alex Ryer, Craig Lundquist, Amy Board, Robin Thompson, Sharon Kay White and Patric Case | 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through Sept. 23 | 2 hours, 5 minutes | $39.50|303-309-3773 or through any King Soopers, TicketsWest (1-866-464-2626) or
