Corn is one of the modern world’s most versatile products since it was discovered about 9,000 years ago in Southern Mexico. Not only is it a staple of human consumption, it is also critical in its uses as livestock feed, a cooking agent for thickening (corn starch), frying (corn oil), or sweetening (corn syrup) other foods, ethanol gasoline, whiskey, and the base of various types of plastics and papers. Add to that list the key ingredient of a successful and incredibly funny Broadway touring musical, Shucked, now playing at the Hippodrome for one fun-filled, pun-filled week. Taking a different path than most new musicals, Shucked teamed up professional, multiple Grammy and American Country Music award winning country songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally to compose an original score for an unconventional but hilarious new book by Tony-winner Robert Horn (Tootsie) and the result is simply a-maize-ing.
Strap in for a lot of corn-inspired humor, a subset of comedy one never knew existed til this week. Our very engaging Storytellers for the evening, Maya Lagerstam and Tyler Joseph Ellis, get the show off to a fast and lively start as they narrate a brief jaunt through the history of corn to set up our “farm-to-fable” story at hand, Horn provides the corny basis but Lagerstam and Ellis deliver it in an uproarious opening number smartly accentuated by Sarah O’Gleby’s inspired “corn-eography”, which even features a clever nod to (dare I say it?) A Corn-us Line. After learning the history and glory of corn (“It takes time to grow. But once it does, it nurtures and sustains us, until we turn it into something toxic that shortens our lives and makes us fat.”), they lead us to the events occurring in present day Cob County, Somewhere in the Midwest, USA, when the nuptials of high profile local sweethearts Maizie (Danielle Wade, Mean Girls) and Beau (DC area native Jake Odmark, Pretty Woman, Kinky Boots, The Inheritance) are interrupted by a corn crisis. For the first time in ever, Beau’s prize corn crop is dying. In a culture that allowed walls of literal cornstalks to insulate them from the rest of the outside world, Maizie, against Beau and the rest of the town’s better judgment, decides to venture out in the world of strangers for help before it’s too late.
Lagerstam and Ellis are a great comedy team who demonstrate their versatility along the way playing basically every bit part in the show, from out of town gangsters to Tampa, Florida, jewelers (and at one clever point, both at once). Strong singers and fun character actors, they hold our focus as they shape and guide our journey through this maze with great self-aware humor. (At one point late in the show as the company men are indulging in a testosterone-laden production number, “Best Man Wins”, Ellis doffs his outer costume layers and announces, “I know this song! I wanna sing too!” as he blends effortlessly into the number.
Wade is charming as our heroine Maizie (“named, obviously,…..after [her] grandmother”), and shows great range in her performance. Having appeared in this area most recently as wannabe “Mean Girl” Cady Herron in the first national tour, here she trades that pop belting and slick, sarcastic wit to pull back in a gentler vocal style that harkens back to a young Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn, and broader humor, all of them perfect for this show.
Odmark as Beau is the perfect good old country boyfriend, strong and supportive, yet condescending without quite being toxic. Physically impressive in that athletic-without-trying looking way, he is even more impressive when he delivers vocally. Given the first of a fantastic pair of back-to-back power ballads, he is sweetly positive when Maizie leaves him to search for answers on her own with the emotive (If she doesn’t want me) “Nobody Will”. He’s also a standout in the above-mentioned “Best Man Wins” guy group number.
But it is Maizie’s distillery-running cousin/best friend Lulu (Miki Abraham, Shucked New York, Once on this Island, Beautiful) who walks off with the show when they delivers their showstopping feminist anthem torch song, “Independently Owned”. Having the hardest job of the show, following in the shoes of powerhouse vocalist Alex Newell, who won the Tony for their portrayal of Lulu on Broadway. Nominated for nine awards, the clever show got neglected in a semi-sweep by the offbeat critical darling Kimberly Akimbo, with Newell being the sole winner and the highlight of the Awards ceremony with their soaring rendition of the song (and their history making turn as the first trans actor to win a major Tony award). Let it be made perfectly clear, that Abraham embraces the challenge and hits it out of the cornfield. Abraham wins the evening with their brassy wit, strong character, and roof-raising vocals on the showstopper. It is entirely to Abraham’s credit that the character escapes all comparison to Newell’s defining performance. And where Newell’s marketing focused on their power belting and bring-the-house-down excesses (which are plentiful, but in the end overshadowed all the other superior elements of the show), Abraham is actually more suited for the other 90% of their score, where thier lyrical voice is more balanced and in line with their belt than Newell’s, which is more of a headvoice. Anyone familiar with the recording will be more than pleasantly impressed with Abraham’s different take on the material.
As Gordy, the antagonist of the piece, a less-than-effective con man from greater Tampa, who lures the unsuspecting Maizie with his guise as a shady podiatrist (she misinterprets his signage as a “corn doctor”), Quinn VanAntwerp (Jersey Boys) makes a great comedic villain as “The worst criminal in [his] crime family” as he ineptly follows Maizie back, the only outsider ever allowed into Cob County, to swindle her and the town.
As Beau’s loveable, idiot savant brother Peanut, (Darling Grenadine, Life & Slimes) Mike Nappi is the audience favorite as the slow guy who randomly spouts pearls of wisdom throughout the show (his most precious rumination of the evening: “I think political leaders are like babies’ diapers—they should both be changed often and for the exact same reason.”). Nappi is charming without being cloying and delivers us the best and funniest character in the show.
Technically, Scenic Designer Scott Pask makes for a compact execution with virtually a unit set—interior of a barn and a patch of corn—that, with the aid of a few slide on pieces, serves as every corn-er of Cob County. The one stretch where Maizie world travels–to Tampa–is handled in as equally as condensed and equally as clever manner. He gets great dramatic Lighting Design from Japhy Weideman with moody color washes and strong columns of light as he creates a world of effects in his little patch of land here.
Costume Designer Tilly Grimes likewise takes a minimalist approach with her rural chic costumes, with just a costume or two in standard looks of earth tones for her salt of the earth characters, with only Maizie breaking out in color after she has “seen the world” (of Tampa) with an increasing degree of hot pink and electric blue patterns as she continues to establish herself as a “woman of the world”. The Storytellers get the most work out of her with various additions and subtractions to their base costumes as they play every peripheral character in town—and a few in Tampa.
John Shivers’ Sound Design is one of the better touring plots on the road, with solid sound and good blends of the more complicated numbers. When the score goes into near hoe-down territory, he does his best blending.
Far from peaking with her opening number, O’Gleby’s choreography is consistently clever and fun, and even throws a few Susan Strohman style tricks into “Best Man Wins” where the men incorporate barrels and planks from the set in very elaborate and creative dance and staging.
Clark & McAnally’s radio-ready score is full of, as expected of their pedigree (McAnally alone has writen 48 #1 hits and is the most-nominated songwriter in CMA history), potential chart topping hits. “Somebody Will” would make a great Keith Urban achy breaky heart ballad, and “Independently Owned” could put Wynonna back on top of the charts with a big song perfect for her powerful voice. If there is a critique in the score, it’s that Clark & McAnally stacked these two perfect songs back to back early in the show, and no song tops either. But their score is the long-awaited third in a perfect trilogy of country musicals led by Carol Hall’s showstopping The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and Roger Miller’s massively underrated Big River.
Horn’s so-stupid-it’s-brilliant screenplay is a delightful blend of rube humor and cutting edge contemporary comedy. In another episode of “Tony Got It Wrong”, he won best book for his infinitely less funny adaptation of Tootsie, where he managed to suck all the humor out of one of the funniest and most flawless screenplays in modern history (and offend virtually every PC activist along the way, who protested everything down to the magnets and cups sold in the merch booths), and lost for this, the most refreshing and clever book of a musical since lockdown. Cited by many critics in New York as “Rogers & Hammerstein meet Hee Haw”, is a tribute to just how he makes his country-fried humor seem so effortless, when it’s actually delivered in very smart samples and unexpected intervals. Especially his handling of Peanut who could in lesser hands have come off as hillbilly bashing nonsense.
Director Jack O’Brien runs a tight show coordinating all the minimalism and filling all the blanks (while tightening about a hundred corn references and dad jokes ) into a laugh-out-loud evening of audience fun. This is decidedly a show where the bulk of O’Brien’s steady guidance goes unnoticed by the average audience member who thinks all the actors just come in saying all those lines just like that. But as a director, I am a-maized by his clever guidance of what could have been a one corny joke show.
I have obviously exhausted all my corn-related humor because I’m repeating, but if I could have your ear for just another minute, let me leave you with this kernel of advice: if you’re looking for a clever, funny, and smart original musical in town with a great score, Shucked is the creamed corn of the crop. Yes, Robert Horn, it’s not as easy as you make it look….
Photos courtesy of Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
The show runs 2 hours and 30 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.
Shucked runs through April 6, 2025, at the Hippodrome Theatre in the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center at 12 N. Eutaw Street. For tickets call the box office at 410.752.7444. or purchase them online .