Review: The Grassroots Musical Shucked Charms On Broadway, One Corny Pun at a Time

Shucked should probably invest in some “Keep the punchlines” pins.

Shucked
Photo: Evan Zimmerman and Matthew Murphy

“I just passed a huge squirrel,” exclaims Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), the delirious farmer who peppers Shucked with endless bizarro one-liners, “which is odd, because I don’t remember eating one.” Hope you find that funny because, to quote another kernel of Shucked repartee, “Like the lazy dentist said: brace yourself.”

In the 1940s, Rodgers and Hammerstein closely tied their musicals’ scripts to the songs with dramatic intention, integrating the disparate elements of the musical form. In Shucked, bookwriter Robert Horn (a Tony winner for Tootsie) dizzily disintegrates it right back again. This time, however, it’s the songs, by Nashville superstars Brandy Clark and Shane McNally, that hold the story together, while Horn’s dialogue spins wildly away (seemingly half of the dialogue consists of free-associative jokes). You could switch most of what the characters say willy-nilly from one act to the other without anyone noticing.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child famously handed out “Keep the secrets” pins to audiences, entreating them not to reveal the on-stage magic to prospective attendees. Shucked should probably invest in some “Keep the punchlines” pins, as quoting the jokes feels like giving spoilers since the quips often take such twisty, shocking turns. But, rest assured, Horn has packed his script so densely that hearing three or four ahead of time won’t hurt.

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Much like the experience of eating corn, Shucked is often messy, especially in unfolding a plotline that sometimes makes little sense as it plays second fiddle to the show’s wackadoodle sense of humor. But also much like the experience of eating corn, Shucked is kind of great. It may not be everyone’s cup of moonshine, but it knows exactly what it wants to be and delivers in spades on the promise of its ridiculous premise. It joins The Book of Mormon as the second rudest, silliest show on Broadway, but, for my money, it’s just as funny and guaranteed to age better. (Horn, who is himself Jewish and gay, does drop in a few Jewish and gay-themed jokes that feel a little too retro for the show’s otherwise up-to-the-minute cultural politics.)

While the origins of the show began with a since-abandoned adaptation of the 26-season variety show Hee Haw, the creators have basically gone in their own direction. (A few characters seem to be named in tribute to Hee Haw performers Lulu Roman, Gordie Tapp, and Beauregard the Wonder Dog.) Hee Haw’s wordplay was often pretty direct, but Horn’s usually take a few beats for the audience to process. “I chopped down that Christmas tree and you asked if I was going to put it up myself,” Peanut reminisces. “And I said no, I’d probably put it up in the living room.”

Shucked
A scene from Shucked. © Evan Zimmerman and Matthew Murphy

While Clark and McNally co-compose a couple uninspired jazzier numbers, they’re on sturdy ground for the majority of the score when they lean into their country roots. The music of Shucked does plenty to anchor the characters in some kind of emotional reality, adding twangy depth to everyone in song, supported by Jason Howland’s expressive orchestrations that beautifully bridge Broadway and Nashville. Occasionally, though, it’s unclear whether the lyrics want to aim for the exact rhymes that would succeed as musical theater laugh lines or embrace country’s more casual off-rhymes: When the songs eschew that kind of precision, it’s harder for the jokes to land. And while there’s a nice rhyme with “tortilla,” I’m still confused by the claim about corn in the opening number that, “You can even make it an onomatopoeia.” Can you?

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As the impressively grassroots and increasingly ubiquitous marketing campaign for Shucked indicates, this is indeed a story about corn. Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler, making a rather delightful Broadway debut) has always grown up in Cob County, and a life built around corn is all she’s ever known. Just as she’s about to say “I do” to her childhood sweetheart Beau (Andrew Durand), the crops suddenly collapse: It’s a corn-pocalypse! Summoning all her corn-fed courage, Maizy ventures beyond her comfortable fields to Tampa, where she recruits a “corn doctor” (the podiatrist kind) who turns out to be an avaricious con man (John Behlmann) to come back with her and restore the corn, Harold Hill meets The Rainmaker-style.

It’d be easy to characterize many of the characters as dumb, but as Beau asserts in a moment of startling eloquence, “We may be simple folks, but there’s a cornfield of difference between simple and stupid. That’s a simple mistake stupid people make.” And while, as nimbly directed by Jack O’Brien, Innerbichler and Durand don’t necessarily make Maizy and Beau complex, they both use their songs (especially Beau’s “Somebody Will,” the show’s best case for country music’s dramatic potential onstage) to infuse the characters with meaningful specificity.

And then there’s Glee alum Alex Newell, who gets a barn-burning solo, “Independently Owned,” that was clearly custom-built for them to garner the inevitable mid-show standing ovation. Spine-tingling vocal pyrotechnics aside, Newell’s dogged self-sufficiency as Lulu, Maizy’s gleefully candid cousin, is instantly captivating: As Lulu intimates in her big number, “Don’t need a man for flatteries/I got a corn cob and some batteries.”

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As the Storytellers (Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson, leaping meta-theatrically into bit roles with a winking omniscience) sing early on, corn’s “the same goin’ in comin’ out.” But Shucked digests a lot better than that. It’s not just that early resistors to Horn’s barrage of jokes, myself included, can’t help but be caught up in the giddy onslaught after a couple hours. Especially in the cozy performances of Innerbichler, Durand, and Newell, Shucked finds a sweet spot nestled in among the puns that allows the show to end on a note that’s surprisingly warm and fuzzy. “Family is telling someone to go to hell, then worrying they get there safely,” Lulu explains.

As another farm-fed musical fella once sang, “The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye/And it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky.” Oklahoma!’s Curly McLain never saw Shucked, but he could have been singing about it. After all, when it seems like Horn’s jokes have gone about as far as they can go, he just keeps on climbing.

Rough Trade is now running at the Nederlander Theatre.

Dan Rubins

Dan Rubins is a writer, composer, and arts nonprofit leader. He’s also written about theater for CurtainUp, Theatre Is Easy, A Younger Theatre, and the journal Shakespeare. Check out his podcast The Present Stage.

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