The Great American Trailer Park Musical Reviews

I hope the rest of the reviews are as good. Given the rocky preview period, the cast and crew deserve a break.

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Anybody else seen this show?

What is it like and did you enjoy it?

Theatremania is Positive:

"It looks as if it's going to be some time -- or never -- until Jerry Springer: The Opera reaches Manhattan, so The Great American Trailer Park Musical is a good bet to fill the gap. This situation probably wasn't what Kelso and songwriter David Nehls had in mind when they decided to write about these folks, but it is one reason to see their tuneful tuner. The other reasons are many; the whole Trailer Park team has collaborated craftily, and the result is a property that doesn't lodge in the memory once it's over but is entertaining while under way.

Nehls has stitched together a country-rock score that calls for some hefty belting. Fortunately, he gets it from performers who can sing, act, joke around, and pelvis-pump with the best of them; cocky as you please, they sell Nehls's ditties as if hawking rhinestones on the Home Shopping Network. While their wigs shake, the ladies sing so loud as to be heard all the way to Dade County; and the two men acquit themselves with the same all-purpose pow. Hensley gets away with Norbert's frequent use of the phrase "holy ham sammiches," and that can't be an easy thing for any actor to do -- not even a Tony Award winner. If these toughened pros can't make The Great American Trailer Park Musical genuinely great, at least they make it right good enough."





http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/6771

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Updated On: 9/28/05 at 12:05 AM

Variety is Mixed:

"There are probably few harder-working ensembles on stage in New York right now than the talented performers in "The Great American Trailer Park Musical." But even a committed cast without a single weak link struggles to breathe freshness into such a crassly cartoonish show, its multitude of variations on a single joke pretty much played out long ago. Sure, even in the post-Jerry Springer era, some folks might still find the world of spray-on cheese, hoochy-koochy dancers, Bacon Bits and Magic Marker huffers hilarious. For others, the smile will begin to fade before the opening song ends.

It's not that "Trailer Park" is enjoyment-free, as audience reactions at Dodger Stages can attest. The derivative numbers are relentlessly peppy and sung with gusto by some terrific voices; vulgar as they often are, many of the jokes are funny; and, in a gallery of gleefully unsubtle stereotypes, there's one priceless comic characterization. But overall, this raucous show has all the cutting edge of a "Mama's Family" rerun and might ultimately play better in the hinterland than in more sophisticated markets like New York.

But while precision execution might have helped disguise the limitations of a comic musical even this obvious, comedy writer-performer Kelso's inexperience as a director shows in the clumsy blocking and unsteady focus.

Aside from the welcome intrusion of a couple of emotional ballads, David Nehls' songs have a twangy, up-tempo sound that's pleasant enough even if they do all seem vaguely familiar and a little interchangeable.

The showstopper (evidently designed as an act one closer before the musical was squeezed during previews into an intermissionless single act) is "Storm's A-Brewin'," a brazen disco rip-off of "It's Raining Men," replete with Hart doing some fearsome Patti LaBelle-style caterwauling and Hensley in full Meatloaf/Jim Steinman mode.

Hopkins and Hensley do a fine job on the more tender songs like the pretty, country-flavored "Owner of My Heart," and "But He's Mine/It's Never Easy" with Orfeh. And the latter's power pipes are put to especially good use in the finale, "Make Like a Nail."

While the entire cast is consistently better than the material, honors go to the delightful Kritzer. Playing Pickles like a Skipper doll brought to life, her screwy line readings and asinine facial expressions are unpredictable enough to make a standard-issue bubblehead into an endearing, almost original character, something the rest of the show never achieves.


http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117928353?categoryid=1265&cs=1

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Updated On: 9/28/05 at 12:51 AM

They cut it to one act because it costs slightly less and also because the cut-down show has a story arc that the producers enjoy (although, as I've said time and again, it was much better before becoming intermissionless). There are rumors that a cast recording will be produced, although nothing is set in stone.

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nevermind, there isnt a broadway recording of SNF

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Updated On: 9/28/05 at 01:59 AM

A pan from the Daily News:

"Silly me! When I began reviewing theater years ago I imagined that my knowledge of Shakespeare, Moliere and Shaw - even Rodgers and Hammerstein - would be useful. But what the job comes down to these days is judging skits.
Last week, the skit up for discussion was "Dr. Sex," which reduced the complicated life of Dr. Alfred Kinsey to a "nudge nudge, wink wink" cartoon.

This week it's "The Great American Trailer Park Musical," with a book by Betsy Kelso and music and lyrics by David Nehls, at Dodger Stages. There's no reason an interesting musical could not have been written about people in a Florida trailer park. But the writers feel only contempt for their characters.

Most of them are women. Jeannie is agoraphobic and has not left her trailer in many years. Her husband, Norbert, is hoping to lure her out for their impending anniversary with tickets to the Ice Capades.

Her neighbor has been experiencing a long, hysterical pregnancy. She is nicknamed Pickles. Get it? Har, har, har.

Lin is named for the linoleum floor on which she was born. Her husband is on Florida's Death Row. All that stands between him and his fate is a power shortage - Lin uses a lot of electricity with the hope that there will not be enough left to fuel Old Sparky.

Most of the time the writers condescend to their characters ("You smashed every single knickknack in this trailer," Norbert says. "Knickknacks is what makes a trailer home.")"




http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater/story/350329p-298850c.html

Rentboy, Orfeh is also on the recent "Hair" Actors' Fund benefit CD--singing "Black Boys" with Kathy Briar and Ann Harada--and was on the OBC of "Footloose," although she was in the ensemble (but you can still hear her!!!).

Oh, let's not forget her Or-N-More CD, which surely isn't a theater recording, but still lets her wail anyway!!!

I truly hope Trailer Park gets recorded. There are a lot of great tunes in it.

Overall, I'm happy that Orfeh, Kritzer and Hart all seemed to get well-deserved shout-outs in the reviews.

AP is Positive:

The musical, which opened Tuesday at off-Broadway's Dodger Stages, has a minimal plot. Betsy Kelso's lugubrious tale of marital infidelity is set in motion when a sassy stripper named Pippi (she's definitely no Longstocking) moves into the neighborhood.

But this raunchy show does have a bouncy, appealing score, delivered by a powerhouse cast that gets every ounce of twang and corn pone out of David Nehl's down-home music and surprisingly witty lyrics.

Best of the lot are the three women who serve as a kind of Southern-fried Greek chorus. They comment on the love triangle that erupts when Pippi hooks up with Norbert, a mild-mannered tollbooth collector -- much to the dismay of Norbert's agoraphobic wife, Jeannie.

These ladies, played by the fabulous Linda Hart, Marya Grandy and Leslie Kritzer, have their own distinct personalities. Hart is the earthy den mother; Grandy, the tart-tongued wife of a guy on Death Row; and Kritzer is the ditzy one, given to hysterical pregnancies.

Whether belting out Nehl's score or gyrating to Sergio Trujillo's infectious choreography, they reignite the show every time the silly, perfunctory love story threatens to shut it down.

"The Great American Trailer Park Musical," which Kelso also directed, lasts only 90 minutes but every redneck cliche is examined -- and exhausted. There's even a song about roadkill. And in the closest the show gets to a "Climb Every Mountain" inspirational moment, Pippi, Jeannie and then the entire cast join in the finale by singing, "I gotta make like a nail ... and press on."

"The Sound of Music" has nothing to worry about.
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/wire/sns-ap-theater-trailer-park,0,2954261.story?coll=sns-ap-entertainment-headlines

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I think the reviewers who didn't like this show went in with the wrong idea. I think they were expecting great - thought provoking theater, which this isn't. Its just entertainment, which technically all theater is.

Am I going crazy, or are the photos that were up earlier from opening night now missing?

Yes, the black baby gag is still in the show.