What did you expect from a show called The Great American Trailer Park Musical?

It's slatternly, foul-mouthed, cheap and tawdry. And fully entertaining, packed with playful blues-rock-country songs, produced with utter professionalism and surprisingly funny.

With a score by recent Denver arrival David Nehls and a book by Betsy Kelso, Trailer Park could have been just another of the many prepackaged musical revues that have rolled into Denver Civic over the past few years. Instead, it's clever and original, with songs that might not bear permanent iPod installation but are certainly fun.

In a trailer park (Armadillo Acres, aka "North Florida's most exclusive manufactured housing community"), Jeannie and her husband, Norbert, are struggling through a marriage devastated by a single day on which their son was kidnapped and Jeannie got a bad perm. Twenty years later, Jeannie - played with a fragile sensitivity by the show's irrepressible co-producer, Alex Ryer - is so agoraphobic she can't join her husband for the ice capades.

In his frustration, Norbert - given his own gentility and a booming baritone by Craig Lundquist - heads off for a local strip club, where he gets entangled with a bad-news stripper, Pippi, who introduces herself in a rapid-fire spiel delivered by Brooke Wilson. Pippi is on the run from her bad-news boyfriend, played with a disturbing mania by Patric Case.

Surprisingly, the show's highlights are not the leads (well played through they are), but the three women who make up a lawn-chair-sitting, short- short-wearing Greek (well, Tarpon Springs Greek) chorus. Robin Thompson returns to the Denver stage after a long absence as Betty, the weathered, tough, sassy trailer-park landlady with an auctioneer's patter. Sharon Kay White brings bawdiness to the role of Linoleum, a bodacious vixen lusting for the return of her death-row husband.

Finally, there's Amy Board, who has proved herself a gifted comedian over the past few years but develops a completely original character with the dizzy Pickles. Board's nasal, comical voice conceals stealthy vocal power, and she punctuates her jokes by allowing her gaze to drift up toward the rafters, a surprisingly funny tack.

Kitty Skillman Hilsabeck directs it all with a necessary affection for the characters and the scenario, punching up songs with lively choreography. Joseph J. Egan's costume and set designs are awe-inspiring, particularly the collection of acid- green and Pepto-Bismol-pink trailers surrounded by lawn ornaments, a cement-planted flag pole (which also serves as a stripper pole) and metal lawn chairs.

Henry Schueller's sound design loses some lyrics, particularly coming from Lundquist and Wilson, and a few of Nehls' rock songs are more grating than funny. Still, Trailer Park is fresh and playful, a young piece with a long life ahead.

The Great American Trailer Park Musical

• Grade: B+

• When and where: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, through Sept. 23, Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive

• Cost: $39.50

• Information: 303-309-3773