Down and Dirty
As a good ol’ boy (from the Bronx), my firsthand knowledge of Florida trailer parks and life in Texas is virtually nil, so I leave arguments about the authenticity of The Great American Trailer Park Musical and Lone Star Love to those with bona fide credentials. I will say that I found both Off-Broadway musicals reasonably entertaining if fairly forgettable fare, an impression that is not contradicted by their just-released original cast albums.
The more appealing of the two shows, both on stage and recording, is The Great American Trailer Park Musical (Sh-k-Boom). It greatly benefits from its top-notch cast, including Tony Award winner Shuler Hensley, the dynamic Kaitlin Hopkins, and the powerhouse vocalist Orfeh. They and the other performers do their darndest with composer/lyricist David Nehls’s snappy rejiggering of the traditional country-and-western sound.
Among the show’s best tunes is “Owner of My Heart,” a tender love duet for troubled spouses Norbert and Jeannie that has a real chance of living outside the show; I can even imagine real-life country couple Faith Hill and Tim McGraw picking up this song. Hopkins also excels in the oh-so-clever “Flushed Down the Pipes,” a hilarious and occasionally touching number about both love gone wrong and product placement, while Wayne Wilcox makes the most of his one number, the snarky “Road Kill.” And it’s hard to resist singing along to the show’s life-affirming “Finale,” in which Orfeh belts the immortal lyrics “I’m gonna make like a nail and press on!” to the skies.
Elsewhere, Nehls proves himself to be a pretty good disco parodist with “Storm’s A-Brewin,” yet the song somehow seems out of place. And even if you can picture the brilliant onstage expressions of the show’s quasi-Greek chorus, played by Linda Hart, Marya Grandy, and Leslie Kritzer, some of their comic numbers fall rather flat on disc — most notably the overlong “The Great American TV Show,” although Hart’s Mermanesque impression of a talk show host is pretty mirthsome. All in all, this Trailer Park is fine for a quick visit now and then, but I doubt if you’ll be spending a lot of time there.
You’ll probably just pass through Windsor, Texas, the setting for Lone Star Love (PS Classics), Jack Herricks’ Civil War-resetting of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. A member of the Red Clay Ramblers (who serve as the show’s musicians), Herricks is hardly the first composer to use the Bard of Avon for inspiration. Unfortunately, he ends up in the back row of the same class as Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Leonard Bernstein, Galt MacDermot, and so on — though he may get to sit ahead of Cliff Jones.
Like Nehls, Herricks employs a lot of country-and-western style melodies, most successfully in the catchy title tune and in “Prairie Moon” and “Count On My Love”, two sweet duets for young lovers MissAnne and Fenton (played by Julie Tollivar and Clarke Thorell). The composer also delivers a searing 11 o’clock ballad, “Texas Wind,” that’s beautifully sung by Beth Leavel. It makes one wish that he had given equal time to Stacia Fernandez, the other “merry” wife. And just as Trailer Park could use a little more Orfeh, Lone Star Love could use a lot more of Harriett D. Foy, whose Mistress Quickly too quickly comes and goes in snippet after snippet without getting a full song of her own.
Also disappointing are the less-than-memorable tunes that Herricks has written for the show’s menfolk. Perhaps he thinks that repeating the world “Cattlemen” 50 or so times in the song of that title is clever, but I beg to differ. Worse yet are “Cold Cash” and “A Man for the Age,” the two defining numbers for the larger-than-life Falstaff, well played by Jay O. Sanders; they capture the vulgarity and crudeness of the character, but nothing else. I may know zip about the Lone Star state, but I know a sub-par song when I hear one.
