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LYRIC STAGE PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERE OF
THE WINNER
New Musical Explores Lyndon B. Johnson’s Notorious 1948 Senate Race
February 16 - March 3, 2007

Lyric Stage, Dallas County’s only locally produced professional musical theater company, continues its 14th season with its 15th world premiere musical, THE WINNER, February 16-March 3, 2007. Performances of THE WINNER will be performed in the Irving Arts Center’s Dupree Theater, 3333 N. MacArthur Blvd. in Irving, Texas. For tickets call 972-252-2787 or CLICK HERE TO ORDER ONLINE. Order your tickets now!

Composer Lewis Flinn and book writer/lyricist Joe Sutton have written a fascinating new musical about the defining election of Lyndon Johnson’s political career. “THE WINNER is a love story between Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife Lady Bird. It is also, however, a tale of one of the dirtiest, most vicious, most colorful campaigns in the history of our country – LBJ’s notorious Senate race of 1948,” says Sutton.

With his trusted campaign manager John Connally, LBJ re-wrote the rulebook on modern politics. And through it all, Johnson’s wife Lady Bird looked on with worry. And then she intervened. With love, with compassion, but more than anything, with a sense of ethics that her husband often lacked, Lady Bird fought for the man she loved – and in doing so, she delivered to her state and her country a man she could be proud of: The man who eventually became the 36th President of the United States. Peter Hackett, chairman of the department of theatre at Dartmouth College, will direct Lyric Stage’s world premiere of THE WINNER.

Drama Desk Award winner Dean Nolen stars as LBJ. Nolen originated the role of Harry Bright on Broadway in the smash hit MAMMA MIA!. Gigi Cervantes will play his loyal wife Lady Bird, Joshua Doss his protege John Connally, Lindsay Holloway will play Connally's wife Nellie. Gary Moody assumes the role of LBJ's opponent, former Texas Governor Coke Stephenson and Ray Gestault is George Parr, the scandalous political boss of Duvall County that delivered LBJ an additional 202 votes a week after the primary runoff, giving Johnson an 87 vote margin of victory. Ben Giddings, Stan Graner, Stephanie Hall, Rob Hood, Jonathan McCurry, Allison Rogers, Kristi Rowan, Gary Taggart and Willy Welch complete the cast.

LEWIS FLINN’s (music) current projects include “The Little Dog Laughed,” currently running on Broadway, Lysistrata Jones, with book by Douglas Carter Beane; Like Love, with book/lyrics by Barry Kaplan (producer Dennis Grimaldi, grants from the Frederick Loewe and Cameron Mackinstosh Foundations and a Drama League New Works award); On Girl, with book and lyrics by Steven Sater; and Down There, with book/lyrics by Brian Crawley. He and Brian Crawley contributed a song, “Little While Lies,” to the 2005 Drama Desk Nominated musical, The Audience. His collaboration with the Concrete Temple Theater Company resulted in “Achtung Grimm” – a political retelling of “Snow White” and “The Juniper Tree,” which will debut at Soho Think Tank’s Ice Factory in 2006. His songs have been recorded by many artists, including Jennifer Holliday, and were recently featured in Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series.

Flinn has also composed scores and songs for more than 50 productions, working with directors Scott Ellis, Mark Brokaw, Chris Ashley, Ron Lagomarsino, Peter Askin, among others. He has written the music for Off-Broadway productions at Second Stage Theater (The Little Dog Laughed, Show People, Privilege) Drama Dept (Mondo Drama, Music From a Sparkling Planet ), Lincoln Center Theatre (Wendy Wasserstein’s Old Money), The Vineyard Theater, Geffen Playhouse (LA) (Looking for Normal), Hartford Stage (Comedy of Errors), Cleveland Play House (6 Productions), Old Globe (San Diego), Playwright’s Horizons ( The Busy World Is Hushed, Plunge), Primary Stages, adobe theatre co (Orpheus & Eurydice), and the Acting Company. In addition, he has been a guest artist at Cornell, Dartmouth and Princeton University. A cum laude graduate of Princeton University and Phillips Exeter Academy, he has received awards and grants from ASCAP, Meet the Composer, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, the Drama League, the National Music Theatre Network, The Dramatist Guild, and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.

JOE SUTTON’s (book and lyrics) provocative plays about politics, race, real estate, the Second Amendment, and other topical issues include Voir Dire (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the Best Play Award of the American Theatre Critics Association), As It is in Heaven, The Benefits of Doubt, Black Market, The Third Army, Guns ‘n Ammo, Restoring the Sun and Enough is Enough. In collaboration with choreographer Karol Armitage, Joe co-wrote The Predator’s Ball, which premiered at the Maggio Musicale Festival in Florence, Italy, and enjoyed a subsequent run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. More recently, Seattle Children’s Theatre commissioned and produced two works by Joe for young audiences, The Magic City and The Red Badge of Courage. Other theatres that have produced or premiered Sutton’s plays include New York Theater Workshop, the Long Wharf Theatre, Seattle Rep, the Arena Stage, the Cleveland Play House, and the Old Globe. Sutton is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, among them fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, the FDG/CBS playwriting award, and New Dramatists’ Joe A. Calloway Award. When not in rehearsal, or teaching playwriting at Dartmouth College, he resides in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, Anne, and their sons James and Nicholas. He is currently working on a commission from the Southern Rep in New Orleans for a play about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

For tickets call 972-252-2787 or CLICK HERE TO ORDER ONLINE. Order your tickets now!

Download THE WINNER program