5 ways ‘Whoa, Nellie’ salutes cross-dressing outlaw queen who scandalized 19th-century Minnesota

She was a cross-dressing “cowboy detective” who got breathless newspaper coverage for her exploits.

Nellie King stole horses, ran scams and changed husbands and outfits often in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas in the 1880s and 1890s. She may not be as well-known as frontier legends such as Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley. But a new crackerjack musical hopes to change that.

“Whoa, Nellie! The Outlaw King of the Wild Middle West” premieres Saturday at St. Paul’s History Theatre. The show was composed and written by Josef Evans, whose other titles include “Hair Ball: A Bigfoot Musical Adventure” and the spoof “A Prairie Homeless Companion.”

In fact, it was while doing research for the latter that Evans got sucked into the Nellie King legend.

“She lived in a wild era before labor laws for children,” Evans said. “We think Nellie ran away with the circus at 12 or so and got married to her first husband.”

It’s notable that she lived at the same time that P.T. Barnum was putting on his great shows. Teething children were given concoctions with addicting opiates to soothe their gums and parents could mail children through the postal service.

“At that time, people all over America were running scams,” said History Theatre artistic director Richard Thompson. “What was unusual was to have a woman do it and gain such fame.”

Here are five points that stand out about Nellie King and the new musical.

She was a shapeshifter: Nellie King was the name that she used most often and that the press glommed onto while she was in Minnesota, her main hub.

But she went by at least a dozen aliases: Nellie Guyon, Nellie Norris, Hazel Gray, Vic Del Rey, Nellie Skinner, Nellie Harold, Nellie Mitchell, Nellie Probasco, Mrs. G. Gordon and Mrs. A. Hudson. She may have also gone by Della Carlos, accompanied by a story of being a ranch hand in Mexico.

In “Nellie King: Wild Woman of the Closed Frontier,” biographer Jerry Kuntz tracked down a potential birth name: Frances Guyon.

“One of the interesting things about her was like her ability to change identities,” said Evans, who noted that she certainly rebelled against the strictures and limited freedoms of the era.

He said that King ultimately reminded him of another Minnesota personality: Judy Garland. “They had some weirdly similar circumstances of being child performers and getting drugs and then sort of struggling with that the rest of their lives.”

Her crimes: King stole horses, which partly explains her cross-dressing. “It’s hard to ride in a dress,” Thompson said.

She also kidnapped babies. And she married frequently, including to a Duluth man with whom she shared an expansive house.

“The papers at the time were theorizing that taking of babies was sort of a blackmail scheme for men with whom she was getting involved and then claiming that they had gotten her pregnant,” Evans said. “In those days, you could just like go to the hospital and say, ‘Hey, I want a baby,’ and the doctor would be like, ‘Well, we got one that nobody’s claiming, so here.’”

I’m famous, don’t touch me. If folks today upload video clips as a kind of self-defense, King had the 19th-century version of such media armor. She traveled with her own newspaper clips.

“She would be getting arrested and would pull out the papers to show the cops,” Evans said. “She cultivated her own legend.”

Cast and crew: Em Adam Rosenberg plays the title character in a cast that includes Jay Owen Eisenberg as Julian Eltinge, John Jamison II as Bert Williams, Leslie Vincent as Annie Oakley and Therese Walth as Nellie Bly. Directed by Laura Leffler, a producing associate at the History Theatre, the creative team includes Bryce Turgeon, who designed a glam costume for one of the contestants on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

The show is a vaudeville fest. The musical pays homage to King by having late-19th-century stars such as Williams tell her story. The musical styles are eclectic, including influences from Gilbert & Sullivan, gospel, ragtime and barbershop quartets.

“Chicago” and “Cabaret” are good equivalents for the kind of show that the creative team is aiming for in “Nellie.” “I love when we can be highly entertained and have a good time and also like grapple with some dark stuff,” Evans said.

When: 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends June 8.

Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul.

Tickets: $30-$74. 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com.