At Miners Alley, ‘The Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical’ is a hilarious departure from typical holiday fare
There’s something to be said about a show that tells you pretty much exactly what it is right there in the title. And while the subject matter may be decidedly low brow, The Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical is quite funny — with a number of things about this production that make it pretty special.
For one, it is the very first show to be staged in the brand-new Miners Alley Performing Arts Center (and you can read more about that here.) For another, it’s got a true local pedigree, with Coloradans David Nehls creating the music and his frequent collaborator Betsy Kelso writing the book. The source material is, of course, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, which Miners Alley also produced last January.
Some of the same characters (and actors) are back for the yuletide edition, with a storyline that includes a trailer-park Scrooge, a sleezy breastaurateur (which is definitely a word), a clueless single mom, a usually drunk redneck, the ghost of a biker and others. And while it takes a little while to leave the runway, once it does the cast delivers the story with maximum esprit de Coors.
Photo: Matthew Gale Photography
Our Scrooge is Darlene — the park’s “C-word” — whose trailer is conspicuously undecorated as the rest of the crew are busily festooning their own in anticipation of a visit from Mobile Homes & Gardens and a potential $10,000 cash prize. Darlene is played with wicked relish by Leiney Rigg — a Cruella de Ville with a drawl who loathes both Christmas and her dipshit neighbors. They’re busy putting up stuff like beer-can menorahs, a tree with a “mudflap girl” atop it and other accouterments created from fabric-softener bottles, cardboard, cheap strings of lights and who knows what else.
As the trailer park manager Betty, Julia Tobey is a delight as the doofus-in-charge, and she’s aligned with head decorator Rufus (Nick Rigg Johnson), the single mom Pickles (Jenna Moll Reyes) and Preston ‘P-Jay’ Adams as a wise-cracking widow/ex-con who got her name, Linoleum, because she was born on a kitchen floor.
As Darlene lets loose with a barrage of insults and scorn for the Christmas decorations, we know that it can’t last: Scrooge must be changed somehow in any of these stories. In this case, it happens in a decidedly trailer-parky fashion when she discovers Rufus is pirating her cable TV with a splitter. When she grabs the low-hanging bunch of wires to rip it down, the resulting shock knocks her out. When she comes to, a bout of amnesia has turned her frown upside down — Darwin Award notwithstanding.
The rest of the gang isn’t about to remind her who she really is, and they get busy decorating her Grinchy trailer with whatever leftover junk they’ve got.
Meanwhile, of course, we’re getting the full musical effect with Nehls on keyboard with three other bandmembers accompanying songs like “F*** It, It’s Christmas,” “Christmas Leather Love,” “Christmas Is for Dummies” and more.
The cast of ‘The Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical’ | Photo: Matthew Gale Photography
Dream cast
This is one of those casts where I was completely split on who I liked best — they’re all excellent in these roles. Tobey is great as Betty, but she also gets a chance to strap on a mustache and play the ghost of Darlene’s boyfriend — a biker who was killed on Christmas Eve, thus fueling her hatred of the season. Reyes is a pitch-perfect ditz, credibly and hilariously underscoring the vast depths of ignorance that can be found in the U.S. — and Florida in particular. As the green-haired, street-savvy Linoleum, Adams is utterly convincing as someone for whom a prison cell and a trailer park are familiar territory.
As Rufus, Johnson has a key role as suitor to amnesiac Darlene and does a nice job as a hard-working, salt-of-the-earth kinda guy. He’s got a drunk scene involving a cheap blowup chair and a Santa suit that’s as good a bit of physical comedy as I’ve seen this season.
Nick Rigg Johnson as Rufus | Photo: Matthew Gale Photography
Rufus soon finds he’s got a tiger by the tail when Darlene starts getting her memory back, prompted in part by the waitresses at Stacks — a pancake brestaurant owned by her current boyfriend Jackie.
With slicked-back hair, Fu Manchu mustache and K-Mart brown polyester slacks, Jackie is played with serpentine glee by Damon Guerrasio — a familiar face on Colorado stages who always delivers great characters.
In addition to his firm belief in the retail value of décolletage, Jackie also owns the land on which the Armadillo Acres trailer park sites, and before long he’s back with a fully recovered, rattlesnake-mean Darlene to kick all the other bums out and build something atop their home.
With all the pieces in place for a showdown, Piper Lindsay Arpan skillfully brings the action to a head as the story screeches to its satisfying conclusion. Kelso’s book is full of the kind of Redneck Riviera trappings anyone who’s ever read a Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry novel is intimately familiar with. “Florida Man” is just as home here as “Florida Woman,” and from the props and set to the costumes, songs and characters, it’s about as deep a dive into the American underbelly as many of us would care to go.
In the end, though, there’s a message about forgiveness, acceptance and the power of friends and neighbors that adds just enough holiday warmth. Even if the wreath on your door is made of beer cans, your cup of cheer comes from a Keg Nog hose and your new business venture is called “Swingin’ Dicks,” there’s always room for redemption because, hey, f*** it, it’s Christmas!
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