It was easy to persuade Ray Roderick to come south to Vero Beach from New York last year. Co-creator of the Irving Berlin tribute, “I Love a Piano,” he was happy to come witness Riverside Theatre’s production of the work he co-wrote, choreographed and directed.
He also was happy to visit his longtime friend, Stacey Logan, a former Broadway actress now living in Windsor. They’ve known each other since they appeared in “Crazy for You” on Broadway in the early 1990s.
So this year, when Riverside decided to stage Roderick’s latest musical, “The Bikinis,” he made it a family affair. He cast his wife, Broadway actress Karyn Quackenbush, as one of the four leads, and hired his son Jamie, a student at SUNY Purchase, as lighting designer.
Quackenbush, who has appeared in a number of television shows including Louis C.K.’s “Louie” and “Law and Order” was the stand-by for Annie in “Annie Get Your Gun,” filling in for Bernadette Peters and Reba McIntyre before taking over the role on the national tour.
Windsor is a far cry from another A1A community, Briny Breezes Mobile Home Park, on which “The Bikinis” is based. Situated on a barrier island 100 miles south of Vero, the park’s first residents bought in the early 1960s. Their number had grown to 488 when in 2005 a developer offered them each $1 million to buy the place out and build condos. While the majority of the residents were thrilled to get rich quick, some couldn’t bear to part with their property. Nevertheless, the deal was moving forward when suddenly, just as the developer was supposed to put up his earnest money, he called the whole thing off when the Briny Breeze board of directors argued over due diligence deadlines.
“The Bikinis,” co-written with James Hindman, is about a fictional fund-raiser held to cover Briny Breezes’ attorney’s fees, on the night they all have to decide whether to sell or stay.
“We created this scenario about a family of snowbirds who owned one trailer coming down there from New Jersey,” Roderick says. “Two of the sisters were part of a one-hit wonder girl group on the Jersey Shore called ‘The Bikinis.’”
In the play, the sisters are now in their 40s with kids of their own.
One sister wants to sell, the other doesn’t. Divisions exist among the rest of the residents, too. And the night of the fund-raiser could be the last time the whole park is together. “This could be their last hurrah if they decide to sell. Everybody’s going to go their separate ways.”
Meanwhile, someone in the park finds their record, an old 45 packed away in a box, of their single hit single. Now the group unites to perform one last time.
“It’s a simple story that unfolds in real time, and it’s breaking the ‘fourth wall’ with everybody talking to the audience like they’re trailer owners.”
The subject matter expands beyond cashing out to condos when the singers begin to reflect on how their lives have changed since their yellow polka-dotted days. True to form, the revue uses music as the pop sound track of their lives.
“When these girls were coming of age, the country was coming of age,” says Roderick. “In the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the music was changing every year.
“We’re picking it up when the songs in American pop were still rooted in the ‘50s, before the British invasion, coming out of the rock and roll genre. But then things started to change, as our country lost a president. By Act II, the music is psychedelic. It’s the Vietnam War.”
With the country’s raising of consciousness, the group’s only hit, ‘In My Bikini,’ from 1967, makes them hopelessly dated. “They become instantly irrelevant.”
Meanwhile, real time for the grownup Bikinis is New Year’s Eve, 1999. The new millennium looms.
“I wanted to do a show that wasn’t just ‘We sang this song, then we sang that song.’ All these stories are true for the most part. Some are exaggerated truths, but they come from real women. And I happen to love women.”
Some of the stories were from his sister’s life; others were from Quackenbush, who summered on the Jersey Shore.
“Jersey beaches are phenomenal,” says Quackenbush. “Every summer for decades we went there, and it was a whole new set of friends and families that came down.”
She got her first taste of musicals when her mother took her to Radio City Music Hall to see the movie “Mary Poppins.”
“I became obsessed with Julie Andrews,” she says. At 16, she started working in the shows of Six Flags theme parks, including one in Texas, where she spent a summer before college. “You work very hard in multiple shows a day. It was quite the experience of learning to be a professional.”
As for Roderick, he grew up on a college campus. The son of the head of the music department at Indiana State University, he went to lab schools with other faculty members’ children and at home was surrounded by not only classical choral music but musical theater sound tracks from college shows his father musical-directed.
Roderick went on to major in performing arts at Illinois State University studying voice, acting and dance. He eventually moved to New York and landed roles in numerous Broadway shows including “Crazy for You,” “Barnum,” “Cats,” “Wind in the Willows” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” with Nathan Lane and Whoopi Goldberg.
From acting he branched out into directing, choreographing and writing. He and Hindman have recently formed a production company, Miracle or Two.
Roderick has ventured into other arenas. He is the longtime creative director of the Tennis Association’s U.S. Open, creating the televised on-court ceremonies for ESPN and CBS.
He even directed the “Shamu” killer whale show for Sea World in San Diego. For six years, he was associate director of A Christmas Carol at Madison Square Garden, and was associate director for the Broadway revival of The Music Man, going on to direct its national tour.
Most recently he was assistant director to Jerry Lewis directing the Broadway-bound version of “The Nutty Professor.”
“The Bikinis” opened in 2012, soon after Quackenbush wrapped up her off-Broadway role in Nora and Delia Ephron’s “Love, Loss and What I Wore.” She had also played in Nora Ephron’s “Imaginary Friends.”
Empty nesters since Jamie started college, the two still own bungalows on Long Beach Island.
The two met after previous marriages, when Roderick ran into Quackenbush on a matinee day, acting on Broadway in theaters across the street from one another. She had a role in “Blood Brothers”; he was in “Crazy for You.” Heading through the stage door to meet an actor friend for lunch, he recognized her as a friend of Stacey Logan’s, and from an audition, when he was casting his play, “I Love a Piano.” (She got the part, but couldn’t take it due to a scheduling conflict.)
Twenty years later, they will celebrate their 16h wedding anniversary in Vero, the night “The Bikinis” closes.
There are no plans to head south to celebrate in Briny Breezes. But they fondly recall their first visit a few years ago. “I remember there was a Bentley in a driveway,” Roderick says.
“The Bikinis” runs Oct. 28 to Nov. 16. Call the Riverside box office at 772-231-6990.
