The first sign that things are going to be a bit askew in the Broward Center’s national Broadway tour of “Shucked” is the set design, by Scott Pask. It’s a barn that, like the corn crop that surrounds it, has seen better days. The entire structure leans, as if it’s about to collapse around Buster Keaton.
It’s a fitting analogy for this musical’s wry tenor: As in Keaton’s misadventures, its existential crisis is described in broad and surrealist comic strokes. But unlike the heyday of silent cinema, “Shucked” is largely propelled not by visual gags or even its tuneful songs but by Robert Horn’s book, with its endless trove of paraprosdokians—two-line jokes in which the second line takes an abrupt turn from the expectations of the first line.
Example, from the character of Peanut, a stealth-philosopher hayseed played with perfection by Mike Nappi: “I was just playing Frisbee with my goat; he’s a lot heavier than I thought.” Horn’s script abounds with zingers like this, most of them too hilarious in their construction and execution—and often too ribald in their double entendres—to spoil here. Many could have hatched in the twisted mind of comedian Emo Philips, which, coming from me, is the highest of praise; they are the reason to the see this tour.
Horn’s book was one of eight Tony nominations the Broadway show earned in its 2022 run, and with its classical structure punctured by occasional self-awareness, the show feels like catnip for the Tony establishment. It’s set in the fictional Cob County, a region so tiny and isolated it makes small-town America look like a bustling metropolis. The town relies entirely on the strength of its robust corn crop for survival, so it comes as a tectonic shock when the pending nuptials of its seemingly perfect couple—the golden-haired Maizy (Danielle Wade) and her beau Beau (Jake Odmark), who have known each other since childhood—evidently cause a blight on the corn’s growth.
The residents of Cob County are a stubbornly self-sufficient folk, but with its very sustainability on the line, Maizy, over Beau’s objections, endeavors to save their way of life by venturing outside the town for the first time in her life—specifically in search of a “corn doctor” in—wait for it—Tampa, Florida. The physician in question, a two-bit huckster named Gordy (Quinn Vanantwerp), deals in corns of a different variety: He’s a crooked strip-mall podiatrist, raised by con artists but thus far unsuccessful in pulling off a swindle that would earn the respect of his merciless family. That is, until he’s approached by a beautiful blonde from nowhere’s-ville with a rotten husk of corn, a bracelet of seemingly precious stones mined from an adjacent quarry, and boundless naivety.
I’ll spare you further details of the story of “Shucked,” because the plot, with its Frankenstein stitching of “The Music Man,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and “Oklahoma!”, is not this show’s strong suit. It’s one of those musicals that could easily have ended in 105 minutes with no intermission, but instead we get a largely superfluous second act that goes to laborious pains to reach its predestined terminus. Sure, if the show were truncated, we wouldn’t get to see grown men dance on barrels for several minutes, but I could live without that.
Similarly, the songs gratify us in the moment without firmly implanting themselves in our subconscious. Country music songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally penned the music and lyrics, which lean more heavily into Americana than most Broadway shows, lending “Shucked” a rustic southern charm. Two solo numbers from Odmark, as Beau, seem as much like auditions for country radio than heart songs in a Broadway show, and they tend to come off as the most stillborn of the tunes. Miki Abraham, as Maizy’s blunt-spoken, sex-positive cousin Lulu, better captures the country-Broadway balance on the rousing “Independently Owned,” a Dolly Partonesque showstopper.
But this is a show in which perfect pitch matters less than immaculate comic timing, of which all the actors have developed in spades, and in which director Jack O’Brien, through expert pacing, mines for every laugh. The scenic, costume and props teams also seem to be greatly enjoying themselves, leaning into the contrasts between the farmlands of Cob County and the meretricious tropicalia of Tampa, depicted by a chintzy pink sign studded with flamingoes, and the splashy wardrobes—and giant stuffed alligator—with which Maizy returns from her revelatory odyssey to the big city.
A year from now, will I recall every detail of this comedy of remarriage and its gently delivered message about embracing outsiders rather than viewing them as a threat? Probably not. But there are enough classic—and I do mean classic—jokes crammed into this overlong trifle that I’m likely to quote them long after the show’s specifics have wilted in my memory. That’s why it’s nearly impossible to be bored or disengaged by “Shucked,” even at its most familiar: There’s a linguistic surprise—or two or three or four—on every page.
“Shucked” runs through Sunday, June 22 at Broward Center for the Performing Arts. Call 954/462-0222 or visit browardcenter.org.
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