When can you call a play with cheesy sets, a clichéd plot, stereotypical characters and bad accents "good"?

When it's "The Great American Trailer Park Musical," a redneck romp through white trash territory, running through Sept. 11 at the Fair Oaks Theatre Festival in Fair Oaks. The show's a hoot.

"Trailer Park" is a departure for the Fair Oaks folks in that it is the first PG-13 rated offering for the festival. It drops about a dozen F-bombs and quite a few s-words (and I don't mean "swear"). It's not for everyone, needless to say.

Set in Starke, Fla., "Trailer Park" portrays the lives of love and lust among residents of the "exclusive manufactured community" of Armadillo Acres. You could say it's an examination of grief, of coping with the loss of a child, of temptation and infidelity sparked by emotional isolation. You could talk about lives of quiet desperation.

But that would be taking the whole thing way too seriously. Mostly, it's about tolltakers and strippers, permanent-marker sniffers and Costco shoppers.

Director Bob Irvin calls the play one of his guilty pleasures, in league with Neil Simon and Cy Coleman's "Little Me," which he produced a few years back, also for the Fair Oaks festival.

"Okay, so it's not 'South Pacific,' 'The Music Man' or 'West Side Story,' but it is its own unique piece of entertainment," Irvin writes in his director's note in the program.

With a book by Betsy Kelso and music and lyrics by David Nehls, "The Great American Trailer Park Musical" is a homespun tale that, with its Southern setting and country-tinged tunes, is reminiscent of the fine "Pump Boys and Dinettes."

Instead of the gas station attendants, we have toll collector Norbert Garstecki (the delightful Daniel W. Slauson) and instead of the waitresses at the Double Cupp Diner, we have the strippers at the Litter Box Showroom Palace and Jeannie Garstecki (the irresistible Brianne Hidden), Norbert's agoraphobic wife, scared to leave her double-wide home since her baby (mistaken for a puppy, it turns out) was taken oh-so-long ago.

Norbert and Jeannie were high school sweethearts who married and had a son. They were happily wed until that tragic kidnapping, when Jeannie took to her recliner and dedicated her days to Lifetime Channel movies: "Like clothes from Walmart, her life is falling apart."

Deane Calvin excels as Betty, owner of the mobile home park since her husband up and died (and got buried behind one of the trailers on site). She's one of "the girls" who offer rude comments on proceedings and double as various other characters.

Calvin also does a mean Jerry Springer imitation in "The Great American TV Show," on which Jeannie, Norbert and his paramour Pippi (Analise Langford-Clark) appear.

Despite its redneck humor, the irrevent show does have a heart, expressed most clearly through its musical numbers. "Owner of My Heart," a duet by Norbert and Jeannie, is perfectly performed by Slauson and Hidden. Their harmonies are tight and right. "But He's Mine/It's Never Easy," performed by Slauson, Hidden and Langford-Clark, is another tender ditty, perfectly pitched and modulated.

Other songs, including the opening tune "This Side of the Tracks," are quite humorous. Among the best are "Flushed Down the Pipes" and "Road Kill." "Flushed" is sung by Jeannie (Hidden), The Girls (Calvin, Christianne Klein and Mary Katherine Cobb), and the "local color" ensemble of Kayla Camper, Joe Hart, Jonathan Blum and Helene Van Sant-Klein.

"Road Kill," which opens the second act, is performed by the hoodlum Duke (Blum), sniffing markers and driving madly all the way from a mall in Oklahoma City to the North Florida trailer park where his Pippi is hiding out.

Thomas Garcia's perfectly cheap-looking set, Beth Duggan's even cheaper-looking costumes and Sunny Smith's choreography complete the experience.

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