Review: Go Ahead and Get SHUCKED at Dr. Phillips Center For The Performing Arts

One would think a musical all about corn would be a one-trick pony with the same tired joke made again and again. Corny jokes about corny people in a corny town. That’s exactly what SHUCKED wants the audience to expect. The very first song, aptly titled “Corn,” extols the virtues of the vegetable, the expected jokes about how it can be used for anything and everything, and how this little town in the middle of nowhere relies so heavily on it that it literally becomes their entire identity. However, hidden within this opening number also lies the subversive nature of the musical itself. This is not just a celebration for all things corn. Rather, it’s a commentary on how small towns in this country suffer from preconceived notions of backwards values, of tradition over innovation, and of hyper-conservative rural voters who nowhere near as bright as a high noon sun on a summer day.

SHUCKED instead looks to deconstruct the reputation of the stereotypical small town – Cobb County in this case – by focusing less on the humorous stereotypes and more on the importance of how a strong community endures. At its thematic core, SHUCKED is a heartfelt celebration of that very community, set against the whimsical backdrop of a corn-obsessed town whose identity is threatened by change. A simple crisis of crop failure threatens to uproot the entire town, which quickly unearths deeper truths about belonging, pride, and the tangled roots that tie people to one another. The musical embraces the quirks of small-town life while tenderly exploring how tradition can both nurture and stifle a community.

We begin with two storytellers (Maya Lagerstam and Tyler Joseph Ellis) who explain to the audience the history of Cobb County, their hometown somewhere north of south and south of north (“Corn”). The corn-loving town has essentially cut itself off from the rest of the world, content in their corn-living lives. As the actual story begins, we are about to watch Cobb County locals Maizy (Danielle Wade) and Beau (Jake Odmark) exchange vows for their wedding, officiated by Beau’s brother Peanut (Mike Nappi). However, the town’s corn crops begin to die, so the town decides to delay the wedding until a solution is found on how to cure their corn. After speaking with her cousin Lulu (Miki Abraham) and their grandfather (Erick Pinnick), Maizy decides to seek help beyond the Corn Wall that separates their town from the rest of the country (“Walls”). This blindsides her fiancée Beau, who fears the change that may come to their town as a result of her actions.

Maizy’s journey beyond the Wall takes her to the glamorous town of Tampa, Florida (“Travelin’ Song”), where she mistakes a sign for a Corn Doctor (meaning podiatrist) as a literal doctor for corn. Little does she know that Gordy (Quinn VanAntwerp) isn’t even a podiatrist, let alone a corn doctor. Rather, he’s a barely-successful grifter (“Bad”) whose current residency in Tampa also comes with a $200,000 debt owed to a local mobster. As Maizy explains her town’s predicament to Gordy, a bracelet made from stones in her town comes loose, leading Gordy to believe that the rocks – appraised by some local jewelers – are extremely valuable. Gordy decides to continue to pose as a corn doctor in order for Maizy to take him to Cobb County. Under the pretense of saving the town’s corn (“Woman of the World”), Gordy’s real plan involves extracting more of the valuable rocks to pay off his debt.

Upon their return to Cobb County, Beau is unsurprisingly upset that Maizy would bring in an outsider who doesn’t know their town or their crops. Maizy believes that Beau simply can’t accept that she was able to find a solution to their problems, ultimately telling him that she kissed Gordy in Tampa. Beau breaks off their engagement, although he’s more heartbroken than angry about her actions (“Somebody Will”). Meanwhile, Gordy tries to charm Maizy’s cousin Lulu, who doesn’t mind brushing him off and extolling her happiness as a single woman (“Independently Owned”). There is another hitch in his plans when duelling and poor-reception cell phone calls – one from the jewelers who appraised the rocks, the other from mob enforcers – lead Gordy to believe the rocks are much more valuable than he anticipated, making him all the more eager to leave town with them as soon as possible. Peanut, Beau, and Lulu overheard the confusing conversations (“Holy Sh*t”), and rush to warn Maizy that her out-of-town corn savior is a trickster. Maizy refuses to believe this, causing a rift between her and her cousin Lulu (“Maybe Love”). Eventually, Gordy tricks the town into believing that he has found a cure for their corn, resulting in a con that will make him rich… were it not for an accidental proposal that leads to him about to marry Maizy (“Corn (Reprise)”).

One reason SHUCKED has been so well received is its masterful balance of tone. Don’t get me wrong, this musical is rife with corny jokes and clever puns and random, pithy asides up the wazoo. It’s an intentionally funny musical with jokes running a mile a minute. However, the knee-slapping comedy of this musical never comes with that wink and a nod that is a tired old sitcom’s bread and butter. The comedy comes mainly from every character playing the straight man. To them, in their world, and in the context of their conversations, nothing is funny. It’s high stakes drama, it’s soap operatic relationship twists, it’s heavy themes of how fear of change creates tradition. And yet, the libretto makes it hilarious. It’s up to the audience to decide what’s funny and what isn’t, not the characters on the stage. As a result, every winning line is earned because it’s not just done for a cheap joke and an easy laugh. The comedy helps serve the story as much as the songs do.

Also key to the success of SHUCKED are the way each character is a turn of a stereotype. Our main character Maizy ticks all the boxes of the sweet southern belle marrying her childhood sweetheart. However, she proves herself to be forward-thinking, willing to defy the expectations of her entire town and family, and actually making a decision for herself rather than relying on her man to save her. Likewise, Beau initially appears to be some closeminded country himbo who’d just as soon sing about driving his pickup truck on a country road with his best girl at sunset. Instead, he’s a sensitive and emotionally-complex man whose main song (“Somebody Will”) is not about that nonsense, but rather about his heartbreak and how his good and honest upbringing will give him strength to move on. And Lulu? She’s not just some strong, independent, black woman who don’t need no man. She’s a businesswoman with a shrewd mind and a big heart, one that allows itself to let a new kind of love in that she didn’t expect. Gordy may have been cut from the same cloth as The Music Man’s Harold Hill, but he’s also terrible at his job. He knows his character type is not one that should succeed, because he’s just not good at it. He shows the most growth of all the characters by sheer virtue of never actually being a bad guy, despite his bad-guy role within the narrative.

The music of SHUCKED also serves to dismantle the audience expectations of what country music is, as well as what they think it should be. The aforementioned link I posted earlier (“Why Country Music Was Awful in 2013”) is not indicative at all of the genre, but does show how quickly it can be pigeonholed if enough artists keep making the same type of song with the same type of theme. SHUCKED approaches country music differently than other country-based musicals. It’s never old-fashioned folksy like Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, nor is it as bluegrass-inspired as Bright Star. Rather, SHUCKED has more in common with Floyd Collins in that it’s a musical with country and folk inspired songs, but with heavier themes and greater emotional depth. All done, as only the SHUCKED cast and crew can, through a lens of comedy. Songs like “Somebody Will” or “Maybe Love” or even “Friends” could easily be inserted into another musical’s story and still work. “Independently Owned” could get released as a single on the radio and garner plenty of replays. The strength of both a hilarious libretto and a versatile repertoire of tunes turn SHUCKED into an instant classic, one which clearly has found its audience in Broadway and beyond.

SHUCKED ran on on Broadway from March 2023 through January 2024, with its North American touring production beginning in October of that year. By June 2025, the musical had hit over twenty-five of its initial thirty cities earmarked for the tour, which is now open-ended and has added an additional twenty locales. Having already made stops in Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, SHUCKED now calls Orlando home for a week, bringing the reliable whiskey barrel of laughs to Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

The cast of SHUCKED is quite intimate, with about nine prominent speaking roles and a modestly-sized ensemble of seven players. Chief among the main characters are the two Storytellers, two unforgettable characters whose relevance is apparent later on. Maya Lagerstam and Tyler Joseph Ellis have an absolute ball in these roles, serving as Greek Chorus for the audience, while also providing humorous turns as a variety of other minor characters throughout. Ellis in particular is better-known on social media for his comedic reels that lovingly lampoon the Theatre Kid experience. It’s quite refreshing to see him use those same memorable skills of comedic timing with a character – in this case Storyteller 2 – that lasts more than thirty seconds on a cell phone. He and Lagerstam easily have the most fun within the show, maintaining a breakneck pace and energy to guide the audience along through the laughter and the tears.

Our resident heroine Maizy is played by Danielle Wade, who was last in Orlando five years ago playing Cady in Mean Girls during its pre-pandemic 2020 National Tour. She imbues within Maizy a direct and unbothered woman that doesn’t mind saying no to her Beau. Wade’s approach to Maizy also makes the character the most relatable for the audience, choosing to lean more into the pathos of her character’s journey than into the written comedy. She can still deliver the zingers, don’t get me wrong, but her strength in the performance comes when she’s the most sensible one in the scene. She’s the tentpole character who remains steady and serious throughout, even when delivering lines like “A grave mistake was burying grandma on a slope.”

Beau as played by Jake Odmark has the vocal chops of Blake Shelton and the stage presence to match. His turn on “Somebody Will” (mentioned thrice in this review now because it’s that damn good) shows he more than earned his place in the sun in this cast. And the actor’s approach to the character’s internal sensitivity helps to make Beau sympathetic, especially given that at first glance Beau seems more molded more along the lines of a typical male country hick, but gradually trades that in for a character with more depth and nuance. Him and Mike Nappi’s Peanut are less Bro-Country and more Brothers Osborne. The brotherly bond they share in their scenes make for some of the most charmingly hilarious moments, especially with Act Two’s “Best Man Wins” number. Quinn VanAntwerp channels both Robert Preston and John Cusack in his portrayal of Gordy. Preston famously played Professor Harold Hill in both the stage and film versions of The Music Man, while Cusack in the early 90s traded amiable high school roles for the deliciously dark Roy Dillon in The Grifters. Yet there’s still some of that Cusack comedy (think One Crazy Summer or Better Off Dead) when Gordy’s at his most ridiculous. It’s a memorably layered performance.

However, the standout of the night was Miki Abraham as Maizy’s no-nonsense cousin Lulu. They didn’t just own “Independently Owned,” they trademarked it. Alex Newell won a Tony Award for their portrayal of Lulu on Broadway, and Abraham had studied and developed Lulu on Broadway as well. They honed the character in collaboration with Newell, ensuring that the touring production’s depiction of Lulu matched Broadway’s in quality, talent, and authenticity. Every scene, every quip, every moment with Abraham felt like magic on that stage. And lines like “These eyebrows may not be my children, but I’m gonna RAISE them” was met with thunderous applause. The comedic timing and the biting sass and the vocal range of Abraham was turned up to eleven all night long.

SHUCKED thrives on the stage and with audiences because of that authenticity in roles like Lulu, as well as its deconstruction of small town archetypes as found in the other characters. It pokes fun at the country living stereotype without turning the reality of it into a punchline. And the show opens a window in a wall, to borrow from the lyrics, for messages and much-needed conversations about entrusting and embracing progress and innovation. There’s nothing every cynical about this musical, which makes it refreshingly different from a lot of the more serious-minded critically-acclaimed musicals of the last twenty years. You won’t expect anyone to crack a joke in Next to Normal. There’s no time for rampant, unrelentingly silly puns in Hamilton. And yeah, some musicals do try to be funny lately. Tootsie. Beetlejuice. Mrs. Doubtfire. They’re just not as good at it as SHUCKED. Maybe because the source material was already funnier than the musical remake.

Originality also works in SHUCKED’s favor. This isn’t some existing IP getting turned into a musical for a quick brand recognition and possibility of profit. This is a wholly original story, based on history, on collective memory, on the pop culture mythos of small town America. What makes SHUCKED so irresistibly appealing even to the most cynical of theatregoers is its sly, self-aware humor wrapped around a sincere emotional core. It aspires to be a solid, memorable night in the theatre. One filled with laughter that just hits the audience at just the right time, for just the right length, leaving them only seconds to recover before it starts all over again.