From “Sex and the City” to “Soap Opera on the Prairie”?
That’s pretty much the back story behind “Cedar City Falls,” a new weekly serial that will make the big jump from Manhattan to DUMBO’s Galapagos Art Space next month.
The two-dozen-character soap opera was penned by four former “Sex and the City” writers, including Prospect Heights resident Julie Rottenberg and Brooklyn Heightser Elisa Zuritsky — childhood friends whose partnership began long before they joined fellow “Sex” alums Liz Tuccillo (“He’s Just Not That Into You”) and Cindy Chupack in Sarah Jessica Parker’s writers room.
Like “Sex and the City,” the new stories are filled with lust, neuroses and conflict — though instead of Fifth Avenue, they’re set in a fictional Texas town that has just lost its favorite son in a car accident that resulted from an argument in a church.
Half the town thinks that the richest lady in Cedar City, Dorothy Sue Groenwald, pulled the plug on the injured man, while the rest of the population blames Marlene, the head nurse at the hospital that night.
Along the way, we meet rival priests Pastor Thelmers and Pastor Larsen, one of whom is actually Jewish; Gareth Knowles, who is sleeping with several women, but about to marry one of them (who may be his sister); Sheriff Lars Groenwald, who loses his job because he refuses to arrest his mother; Pam Ness, whose sudden affinity for marijuana leads to a mishap with a corpse; Edna Mae, who just wants to bury her son and get a free car somehow; and a NY1 cameraman named Baz, who just happens to be in town chasing a rumor about a Bloomberg mistress.
And for an only-in-a-New-York-writer’s-mind twist, characters parrot philosopher Friedrich Glasl, whose theories about conflict escalation apply to nations, cultures and, yes, even residents of flyspeck towns.
If that sounds like a lot to keep straight, don’t worry; a drawl-slinging narrator provides exposition at key moments. And the cast — which includes Joyce Van Patten, of all people! — is filled with Broadway and TV names who know how to keep the soap sudsy.
“Clearly, I grew up watching a lot of ‘General Hospital,’ so it was fun to get to do a campy, ‘Prairie Home Companion’ version of that,” said Zuritsky. “But there’s also some very serious stuff about war and conflict in there, too.”
The last four episodes of the eight-segment story will be in Brooklyn. Zuritsky said she didn’t know how it would end, but promised that the conflicts would indeed escalate.
“I do know this: there will be blood,” she said.
“Cedar City Falls — A Mid-West Conflict” at Galapagos Art Space [16 Main St. at Water Street in DUMBO, (718) 222-8500], Nov. 4, 10, 17 and 24, 7 and 9:30 pm. Tickets are $18 through Smarttix.
