A.J. Carian, Jay Kincheloe, and Kenneth Ansloan

This year's incarnation takes place in the Yucca Vista trailer park, somewhere in a white trash corner of our city. Drag shows sometimes don't have a plot, but this one has two. Pandora Clark, who has a very local radio show (the studio is in her living room), is determined to win the Fox TV competition for new reality show ideas. She thinks that her trailer park and its denizens would be the perfect setting and characters for one, so she sets up as many confrontations among the inhabitants as she can (only to have it all rebound on her, of course). Simultaneously, Dolly Haggard is trying to get a cast together for her "drive-by live nativity," where park residents play the characters around the manger, honoring not just one king but two (the other being, you guessed it, Elvis).

The first act has a few good bits, but seems interminable. Either The Dolls don't know the meaning of the word "edit," or more likely, they are too generous in giving everyone a plentiful amount of stage time. I could do without the lip synching. The much tighter second act, however, redeems the show, setting up the audience to leave in a joyful Christmasy mood.

Although The Dolls is a collaborative effort, the mastermind is triple-threat Kenneth Ansloan: writer, director, and glamorous star "Tequila Mockingbyrd." Usually, he plays a Joan Crawford kind of role, and often Joan herself, but Pandora is no Joan clone. The good thing is that he doesn't camp it up too much, but achieves real poignancy at times, like in the scene in which Pandora apologizes to her gay son for calling him a faggot.

The son is played by "Seymour Johnson" (get it?), who does a fine job, including singing (not synching) a touching song to Mom. A.J. Carian (no drag name) is the seven-times-married Daphne Jones and Pandora's BFF, but none of those F's stand for faithful. This is the only trailer park where people wear evening gowns all day long, and A.J. pulls it off (not literally). "Patti Roxxx" (Jaime Pardo) is hilarious as the wonderfully named Esmeralda Apodaca, even though his New Mexican accent gets lost here and there. And Jay Kincheloe is good in drag as Mary Helen Tubbs, but he's saddled with the most irritating character in the show.

Maybe there's a shortage of drag performers in town, because some of the women's roles are played by actual women. Jessica Osbourne does some wonderful business with an unstable shelf, and she turns the act of laughing into a piece of performance art. Teresa Longo and Sara Ryan are good too, in underwritten roles. Russell Maynor is sporting as Pandora's redneck husband and the white-jumpsuited Elvis (and he is the assistant director).

The set by John Kupjack and Nina Dorrance is excellent, and nicely appointed with trailer park accoutrements: velvet Elvis, singing fish on the wall, etc. If you're not sitting close, you might not notice that the mugs Pandora and Daphne drink out of are from Kum & Go (a convenience store chain in the Midwest) and In-N-Out (burger chain in California and Arizona). Them's the jokes, folks. The set changes are cleverly done, and the lighting (also by Kupjack) is very good, especially in the drive-by nativity scene.

I miss the Dolls' old Joan Crawford/Marilyn Monroe Christmas "specials" of several years ago, but alas, those can never be anymore. Christmas at the Yucca Vista is a fun substitute, and I'm always in awe of Ken Ansloan's creativity.

Christmas at the Yucca Vista Trailer Park is being presented by The Dolls at the Aux Dog Theatre Nob Hill in Albuquerque, on Monte Vista just north of Central. Through December 21, 2014. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00, Sundays at 2:00. Info at www.auxdog.com.

Photo: Valerie Santagto

--Dean Yannias