When it was first announced, Shucked didn’t seem a likely candidate for Broadway success. A show featuring country music that began as a send-up of Hee-Haw? Sure, New York City has plenty of tourists from rural states, but the Great White Way tends a bit toward snobbery. (And yes, I’m aware of such successes as Big River and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, among others. But those are the exception to the rule. Bright Star, anyone?) And while I enjoyed Minnie Pearl’s hats and Roy Clark’s guitar picking as much as the next guy, I can’t say that I was looking forward to a musical that seemed to revolve entirely around…corn. Indeed, you can’t walk a block in midtown without encountering one of the show’s banners featuring a bright yellow husk.
Well, hush my mouth! The musical, featuring a book by Robert Horn (Tootsie) and songs by Nashville veterans Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, emerges as one of the brightest surprises of the spring season, delivering more hilarious gags per minute than any show since The Book of Mormon. It does nothing less, and to be fair, not much more, than provide a wonderfully good time, assuming you don’t mind feeling a bit sheepish for laughing at jokes that could easily have been delivered by Jeff Foxworthy.
The show, which has departed from the original Hee-Haw idea, takes place, where else, in Cob County, which, as you might guess, depends on its namesake crop for its livelihood. So it’s particularly distressing when the corn starts dying for no apparent reason, prompting local girl Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler, thoroughly charming in her Broadway debut) to leave her small town for the first time in search of help in the “big, scary city” of Tampa. There, she enlists the help of Gordy (John Behlmann), a slick, handsome con man posing as a podiatrist she believes can solve the problem because of his sign advertising his services as a “corn doctor.”
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Gordy offers to help, but only because he’s deeply in debt to gangsters and believes that the precious stones adorning her bracelet, which she says are plentiful throughout Cob County, will solve his financial problems. The innocent Maizy also falls immediately in love with Gordy, despite being already engaged to her longtime boyfriend Beau (Andrew Durand) whom she was just about to marry when the corn started failing.
All of these plot developments, by the way, are introduced by a pair of narrating “Storytellers” who also regale us in song and occasionally play other minor characters. They’re played by a baby-faced Grey Henson (Mean Girls) and a more sardonic Ashley D. Kelley, and they’re a constant delight.
To describe more of the plot seems silly, since the show doesn’t exactly traffic in narrative nuance. What it does traffic in, and to a degree that rivals midtown Manhattan during rush hour, are jokes. Lots and lots of jokes, many of them of the punning variety. I normally find puns to be a lower form of humor, but Horn, who has plenty of comedy writing bona fides thanks to his experience as a creator, writer and producer of such sitcoms as Designing Women, Living Single and others, turns them here into a fine art. Also hilarious are the mock aphorisms on display, many of them delivered by the town philosopher, Peanut (Kevin Cahoon, his deadpan delivery enhancing every line). Even if some of the jokes are more groan than guffaw worthy, they arrive with such rapid-fire velocity that you’ve barely stopped laughing at one before succumbing to the next.
Beginning with the rousing opening number, “Corn,” featuring a corn cob kick line (I kid you not), the score by Clark and McAnally, featuring not just country-flavored songs but also traditional Broadway-style ballads, proves consistently tuneful. One highlight is “Independently Owned,” delivered in showstopping fashion by big-voiced supporting player Alex Newell, whose spectacular turn as Maizy’s cousin Lulu is guaranteed a Tony nomination. Innerbichler and Durand are given moments to shine in their respective solo numbers “Maybe Love” and “I’ll Be Okay,” with the latter also garnering audience catcalls in a scene in which he removes his shirt to reveal a chiseled torso in a comic attempt to win back Maizy with some exaggerated muscle flexing.
Director Jack O’Brien orchestrates the proceedings with endless imagination and precise comic staging that accentuates the show’s strengths while downplaying its weaknesses. Thanks to the outstanding efforts of all concerned, Shucked feels as light and airy as Scott Pask’s beautiful set design of a huge, multi-level wooden barn.
Shucked opened April 4, 2023, at the Nederlander Theatre. Tickets and information: shuckedmusical.com
