Theater: Little Shubert Theatre / 422 West 42nd Street, New York, New York, 10036
Synopsis:
Welcome to Nashville - a town full of colorful characters all chasing after the very same dream: a smash hit record. To beat the odds and strike gold (or, better yet, platinum), it takes one great song, serious talent, or lots of luck - and preferably all three. Featuring an array of musical styles with salutes to Country, Broadway, Vaudeville, Bluegrass, Pop, and even Hawaiian, Lucky Guy weaves a tale of down-home dreamers and low-down schemers all willing to do whatever it takes to come out on top in the cut-throat world of Music City, USA.
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May 19, 2011: Thanks to two central performances that go a long way toward transcending the occasional placeholder melody and clunky double entendre (O.K., the more-than-occasional clunky double entendre), “Lucky Guy” is more fun than it ought to be.
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May 20, 2011: Musicals don't get much frothier than Willard Beckham's Lucky Guy, now playing at the Little Shubert Theatre. And while this corny tuner has the potential to be a wearisome excursion into camp, it boasts a comic zestfulness that's as refreshing as a cool glass of lemonade on a hot summer day and a heart as big as a stretch of a Midwestern plain, ultimately winning theatergoers' hearts and earning their laughter.
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May 19, 2011: Any musical that includes a Hawaiian number featuring that fabulous drag queen Varla Jean Merman sporting a Carmen Miranda fruit salad on her head can't be all bad, especially when that show is supposed to be centered on country and western music. The two idioms—gay-influenced high camp and down-home regular-folks tunes—should mix about as well as oil and water, but "Lucky Guy," a nifty little show featuring book, music, lyrics, and direction by Willard Beckham, blends the disparate sensibilities into a hilarious, fun-filled spoof.
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May 20, 2011: A new musical that opened Thursday at the Little Shubert Theatre, “Lucky Guy” blithely hee-haws along a well-worn narrative path: Seeking fame as a songwriter, innocent Billy Ray arrives in Nashville only to stumble into the clutches of Big Al, a greedy wheeler-dealer, and Jeannie Jeannine, a glamazon country music star on the wane, both of whom are in cahoots to steal the kid’s surefire song hit. Prosaic though his plotting happens to be, writer-composer-director Willard Beckham gives his script and staging of the musical enough of a comical rainbow twist to make “Lucky Guy” into an amiable hootenanny with a big emphasis on the hoot. The storyline is strictly heterosexual, but Beckham’s silly, frilly treatment of it is very gay indeed.
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May 21, 2011: Hats off to anyone who can enjoy “Lucky Guy,” a country and western musical featuring a drag queen, a diminutive gay icon, and a story and score that could’ve been written over a long weekend.
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