Color me “Shucked” — sorry, shocked.
For I actually have finally seen the brand new musical that popped open Tuesday night on the Nederlander Theatre.
The one which has been inundating straphangers in subway stations for months with ubiquitous yellow corn cob posters as if it’s attempting to be Broadway’s answer to “Shen Yun” or “Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar.”
Running time: 2 hours and quarter-hour with one intermission. On the Nederlander Theatre,
208 W. forty first St.
Multiple mystified person has asked me if the show is definitely real.
Well, it’s real. And, what, it’s real good too. In case you’re keen on laughing, “Shucked” is the most effective latest musical of the Broadway season up to now.
The Southern comfort show, with a tuneful country rating by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and an excellent book by Robert Horn, is just so rattling funny.
If any of the outrageous yokel characters open their mouths to do anything but sing, 99% of the time they’ll deliver a winning joke or pun. The receptive audience sits in a state of perpetual giggle, with heads bobbing up and down like buoys.
An example of the humorousness: A scamp named Peanut (Kevin Cahoon, good) is a walking Poor Richard’s Almanac who colorfully pronounces his unhinged, universal truths as we howl back. “I feel if you will have time to leap in front of a bullet for somebody,” he says to the group, “they’ve time to maneuver.”
But what’s “Shucked”? The premise is as zany because the zingers. The musical, directly traditional and funky, is about in fictional Corn Cob County, a small-town Southern oasis surrounded by corn that’s as high as an elephant’s eye.
But when their all-sustaining crop starts to die (we actually watch the plant wither like a cheesy old Disneyland ride), spunky Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler) sets out to the “big city” to seek out a hero to avoid wasting the corn.
The large city is Tampa, Florida.
So sings Gordy (John Behlmann), the podiatrist Maizy meets (and misinterprets as her saving grace) due to a neon sign that reads “Corn Doctor”: “Tampa! In case you can’t afford Orlando or Savannah!”
But Gordy is secretly a sleazy fraud, who each swindles and romances wide-eyed Maizy within the kind of Harold Hill from “The Music Man” or Bill Starbuck in “The Rainmaker.” Uh oh, she also happens to be engaged to a lanky farmer back home named Beau (Andrew Durand).
The motive for Gordy’s scheme is that he believes Cob County’s soil is wealthy with a precious mineral, and he desires to steal it.
The story, which unfolds on Scott Pask’s aptly askew barn set, is a cinch to follow because of a pair of casual narrators, played by Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley. Henson, who played Damian in Broadway’s “Mean Girls,” is a meme come to life. He gets huge laughs, quickly, with modern attitude.
And don’t get on the improper side of Maizy’s cousin Lulu (Alex Newell), a single-and-proud-of-it corn whisky maker who’s skeptical of outsider Gordy and belts the rousing song “Independently Owned.” Newell is an outstanding singer, and shakes the group into submission with Clark and McAnally’s number that summons the smiley defiance of Dolly Parton.
Innerbichler’s Maizy is comparably guileless to in-your-face Lulu, but her take is nonetheless unique. If Broadway is often known as a house to Disney princesses, this actress has more in common with a heroine from a better Pixar movie. And as her Beau is Durand, whose appealing strangeness and stellar pop voice finally get a deserving vehicle.
They croon a rating that’s all the time, on the very least, likable, but other standout solos are Maizy’s “Possibly Love” and Beau’s “I’ll Be Okay.” A bunch number for the boys called “The Best Man Wins” in Act Two is an edgier “Brotherhood of Man” from “How To Succeed.”
Jack O’Brien skillfully directs the comedy to return off each precise and off-the-cuff, and I used to be tickled by choreographer Sarah O’Gleby’s ear-of-corn tackle “La Vie Bohème.”
Nevertheless, just because the case was with “Tootsie” in 2019, Horn’s book is the indisputable star. The author is understood for his work on TV’s “Designing Women,” and brings that very same sit-com sensibility to the stage. Thank God for that. The second act is, admittedly, not quite as propulsive as the primary, but wraps things up like a tamale.
“Shucked” isn’t the one latest show on Broadway with laughs, nevertheless it is the one unapologetic comedy in the sphere. There aren’t any “but”s here. “Such-and-such musical is hilarious, but preachy.” Or “Whatsitcalled is funny, but makes you consider your individual mortality.”
All you consider at “Shucked” is what a terrific time you’re having. Nothing corny about that.
