Theatre in Review: Lucky Guy (Little Shubert Theatre) In a recent interview, Leslie Jordan, one of the stars of Lucky Guy, reported that the show was, in fact, written 30 years ago. This is really surprising -- after all, most of the jokes in Lucky Guy are two or three times older than that. Everything about Lucky Guy has the faintly yellowed quality of the tired-businessman entertainments of yore. This is even true of the show's premise -- a babe lost in the show business woods -- although, with a little effort, you could probably get a pretty good show out of it. Here the lamb to the slaughter is Billy Ray Jackson, a hunky country boy who lands in Nashville, having won a songwriting contest. Only thing is, the contest's sponsor, G. C. Wright, is a former UPS man whose infant recording business is about to be shut down by his cousin, Big Al Wright, a used-car salesman who wants to erect a new lot on the premises of G.C.'s Wright Track Records. For reasons I couldn't explain 15 minutes after seeing Lucky Guy, Big Al decides he has to get his hands on Billy Ray's song, and enlists the aid of Miss Jeannie Jeannine, a statuesque songbird who badly needs a hit to revive her fading career; Big Al sics the predatory diva on Billy Ray, thus upsetting Wanda Clark, G.C.'s secretary, who carries a torch for the young songwriter, even though , by my count, she has only known him for three or four hours. What follows is a series of tedious plot complications about contracts and song rights spiked by a procession of gags that combine country cornpone with the lowest possible camp. "He just put the dill in my pickle," coos one of Billy Ray's admirers, Chickie, who works as a hairdresser at a drive-in salon called the Wigateria. "Everyone leaves their hair there," she adds. "We can't afford for Big Al to find out you're here and put the kaibosh on the whole schmegeggy," Jeannie warns an understandably baffled Billy Ray, who has yet to learn that Yiddishisms are the lazy librettist's way of getting a laugh. Then again, other ethnic groups get unwelcome attention, too; hanging up a Hawaiian costume, Jeannie asks, "What's 'sarong' with that?" Speaking of that Hawaiian outfit, she wears it in number in which she rises out of a volcano, only to ask - yes -- "Is it hot in here, or is it just me?" As the lyrics to one of the songs notes, "There's always a hitch in a trailer park romance," and Lucky Guy is loaded with hitches, most of them having to do with the contrived, convoluted plot; the silly, unmemorable songs; and the twice-told jokes. With jokes about Jean Dixon and the Mayflower Madam, it seems clear that Willard Beckham, who is responsible for book, music, and lyrics, hasn't seen fit to freshen up the property any time this decade. Worst of all are the feeble attempts at bawdy remarks. "I don't know what you're trying to pull, but it ain't gonna work," warns Wanda. "When I pull somethin', it always works," smirks Jeannine. Well, there you are. To the extent that anyone is amused by Lucky Guy -- and .I must admit, at the performance I attended the house was filled young gay guys laughing their heads off -- it's as a vehicle for Jordan as Big AL and Varla Jean Merman as Jeannie. Jordan, best known as the swishy Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace, plays his entire role directly to the audience, offering essentially the same line reading for two-and-a-half hour; clearly, he has a fan following, but I won't be joining any time soon. Merman, the creation of Jeffery Roberson, has her moments, especially when she's nervously eyeing the edge of the stage during a production number, or when confessing, to her everlasting shame, that she's not trailer park trash at all. Roberson, dressed in Loretta Lynn-style gowns with towering wigs, dominates the stage like an Amazon, making Jeannie into a kind of walking sight gag (Jordan's big Al barely comes up to Jeannie's belt buckle.) Think of Joan Sutherland trading in the Met for the Grand Ole Opry and you've got the right idea. But the material rarely allows the performer to shine. Among the rest of the cast, the role of Billy Ray allows Kyle Dean Massey little more than the chance to hit some big notes out of the theatre, which he does with aplomb. Savannah Wise, as Wanda, continues to demonstrate that she is one of our more charming ingénues. Jenn Colella really deserves better than the role of Chickie, who gets the bulk of the really awful gags, but she partners nicely with the underused Jim Newman as G.C. Lucky Guy has an unusually elaborate production design for Off Broadway, but that's a mixed blessing. The first set in Rob Bissinger's design -- a Nashville street -- is so garish, I despaired, but later on he comes up with an amusing interior for Jeannie's 28-room trailer, complete with champagne-flute columns, and he also provides a fairly good replica of the Grand Ole Opry set. William Ivey Long's costumes -- especially Bi Al's suits, inspired by the late designer Nudie -- prove that sometimes when you set out to spoof vulgarity, you just end up being vulgar. Paul Miller's lighting is a thoroughly solid piece of work, pacing and polishing the musical numbers, which need all the help they can get. Kurt Fischer's sound design is surprisingly muddy, and the vocals often have an unpleasantly hollow quality. Anyway, as Chickie says about her 13-year relationship with G.C., "Even milk has an expiration date," and I'm afraid Lucky Guy is long past its prime. Like many longtime musical theatre fans, I'm not too thrilled by many current trends, as represented by shows like Million Dollar Quartet and Baby, It's You!; I continue to believe that the traditional book musical format has a lot of life in it, and nobody loves a lighthearted, just-for-fun show like me. But if Lucky Guy represents the state of the traditional art, then bring on the jukeboxes!--David Barbour 
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