Lucky Guy | |
---|---|
Music | Willard Beckham |
Lyrics | Willard Beckham |
Book | Willard Beckham |
Productions | 2011 Off-Broadway 2020 Center for Theater Arts |
Lucky Guy is a musical comedy written and directed by Willard Beckham. The piece tells the story of Billy Ray Jackson, a young musician from Oklahoma who wins a songwriting contest and is invited to Nashville to record his song. He becomes the target of the used-car dealer Big Al Wright and the fading star Miss Jeannie Jeannine (the "Queen of Country Music"), who want to steal Billy Ray's song and use it to revitalize Jeannie's career.
The show premiered on May 19, 2011, Off-Broadway at the Little Shubert Theatre, for a planned run through July 24 but closed after just ten days. [1] [2] The cast included Kyle Dean Massey (as Billy Ray Jackson), Leslie Jordan (Big Al Wright), Varla Jean Merman (Miss Jeannie Jeannine), Jenn Colella (Chicky Lay), Jim Newman (G. C. Wright), and Savannah Wise (Wanda Clark). A new production of the show was put on by the Center For Theater Arts, a performing arts school in the Pittsburgh, PA area in 2020. Willard Beckham worked with the executive director of the school, Billy Hartung, to make the show more suitable for a very large high-school age cast.
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known for her distinctive, powerful voice, and her leading roles in musical theater, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." She performed on Broadway in Anything Goes, Annie Get Your Gun, Gypsy, and Hello, Dolly!
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Leslie Allen Jordan was an American actor, comedian, writer, and singer. His television roles include Beverley Leslie on Will & Grace, several characters in the American Horror Story franchise (2013–2019), Sid on The Cool Kids (2018–2019), Phil on Call Me Kat (2021–2022), and Lonnie Garr on Hearts Afire (1993–1995). On stage, he played Earl "Brother Boy" Ingram in the 1996 play Sordid Lives, later portraying the character in the 2000 film of the same name. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jordan became an Instagram contributor, amassing 5.8 million followers in 2020, and published his autobiography How Y'all Doing? Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived in April 2021.
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