Review: North American Tour of SHUCKED Serves Up Sweet Corn in Boston

If you think you’re immune to corny jokes, think again.

Indeed, when those one-liners and puns are not only corny but all about corn, you just may want to surrender and let the laughs burst like Jiffy Pop, as they are on the North American tour of “Shucked,” the musical being presented by Broadway in Boston at Citizens Opera House now through April 20.

With book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn (“Tootsie”) and music and lyrics by country-music singer-songwriter Brandy Clark and her frequent collaborator and fellow Grammy Award winner, country singer, songwriter, and record producer Shane McAnally, “Shucked” opened at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre on April 4, 2022. It went on to receive nine Tony nominations that year, including Best Musical. Cast member Alex Newell, who identifies as a non-binary, won for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

The show – with brisk and clever direction by three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien (“Henry IV,” “Hairspray,” “The Coast of Utopia”) – opens with a pair of storytellers, played with winning good humor by Tyler Joseph Ellis and Maya Lagerstam, detailing the history of Cob County, focusing on its love for corn and introducing the audience to the betrothed couple Maizy (Danielle Wade) and Beau (Jake Odmark) at its heart.

Wade, Odmark, Ellis, and Lagerstam, along with the ensemble – all with terrific voices with plenty of small-town sincerity – set the tone for what’s to come with “Corn,” an opening number singing the praises of “Corn! Yes, we said corn. Just as sure as the day that you were born. In the evening, it’s for supper, then it’s grits in the morn. No, it ain't our bread that's buttered, no, it's corn. We're here to tell you a fable – a farm to fable (ooo!) – about a simple place time forgot called Cob County.”

The celebratory mood shifts and the wedding planning stalls, however, when Cob County’s cash crop starts to wilt. In a move all but unknown to others before her, Maizy exits her beloved hometown on “Walls” and lands in Tampa, in a scene that may remind some of Elder Price’s dreams of Orlando in “The Book of Mormon.”

Immediately taken with that Florida hot spot where she hopes to find a treatment for the ailing cornfields back home, Maizy crosses paths with Gordy (Quinn VanAntwerp), a “corn doctor.” Maizy is unaware that moniker means podiatrist, and soon the pair are playing footsy. And while newly emboldened Maizy (“Woman of the World”) is drawn to Gordy, who’s from a family of conmen and in debt to the mob, she doesn’t realize that, to him, she is just his latest mark. Maizy takes Gordy back home with her, infuriating Beau, who calls off the wedding and heads in search of his own new love (“Somebody Will”).

Clark and McAnally’s songs are fun throughout and made more so in production numbers featuring Sarah O’Gleby’s spirited, high-kicking choreography. In act one, a true highlight comes when Gordy puts the moves on sweet-spirited liquor distributor Lulu (a scene-stealing Miki Abraham), who, having none of it, lets loose on “Independently Owned.”

While “Shucked” is an original musical, some of its numbers have distinct echoes of earlier shows. A prime example can be found in the “Corn” reprise, where Vanantwerp’s Gordy all but morphs into Harold Hill. And it isn’t just other musicals that seem to have inspired elements of “Shucked,” it’s also “Hee Haw,” the long-running television variety series set in Kornfield County.

Horn, Clark, and McAnally originally teamed on “Moonshine: That Hee Haw Musical,” which had its premiere at the Dallas Theater Center in 2015. Horn ultimately decided that “Hee Haw” didn’t fit with contemporary sensibilities, though, so he set about writing a new book, with new music by Clark and McAnally, and retooling that show into what is now “Shucked.”  

Fortunately, the free-flowing humor was retained, with many of the one-liners delivered by a character called Peanut, played here to cornpone perfection by Mike Nappi. A Junior Samples-inspired sampler of these jokes: “I was just playing frisbee with my goat. Boy, he’s heavy,” “Down here, Roe v. Wade isn’t anything political, it’s just a choice of two ways to travel,” “A paper airplane doesn’t fly, it’s stationery.”

And if the name Lulu sounds familiar, it may be because it’s another homage, this time to “Hee Haw” regular Lulu Roman, and another example of what makes “Shucked” such sweet corn.