SHUCKED
Book by Robert Horn
Music and Lyrics by Brandy Clark & Shane McAnally
Directed by Jack O’Brien
Nederlander Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
You’ll already have heard a lot of enthusiasm about Shucked, the countrified musical comedy at the Nederlander, and none of it is misleading. Despite the kind of cornpone ambience that takes hold in the Big Apple only rarely, this is an unusually something-for-everyone entry. It’s rather as if a combination of Hee-Haw and Green Acres had been strained through a filter of MTM sitcom sensibility (book: Robert Horn)…losing none of the stuff that would appeal to, as a Warren Leight character once put it “those Rodgers and Hammerstein flat-ass states,” and picking up a level of wit and wordplay to make any blue-state-er feel like he’s betraying the brand for enjoying it.
The songs are attractive and catchy (Brandy Clark & Shane McAnally), the performers are as skilled at expert comedy timing as they are at singin’-and-dancin’ up a storm (choreography: Sarah O’Gleby) and it’s as well-directed as it can possibly be (the redoubtable Jack O’Brien).
I’m sure you hear the “but” coming—a phrase which Shucked would waste no time in exploiting.
And here it is…
But…
The plot is completely silly sitcom-romcom by-the-numbers. If you were to swap out the minimal references to contemporary life and society, clean up some of the jokes, choose your double entendre battles with a bit less profligacy, the story told by Shucked would fit, neat as a pin, into one of those Princess musicals from the turn of the 20th century. Here’s the boilerplate, right off Wikipedia (I’ve interpolated the actors’ names).
“Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler) and Beau (Andrew Durand), two residents of the rural Midwestern community of Cobb County, are forced to postpone their wedding when the corn crop is blighted. Maizy, on the advice of her cousin Lulu (Alex Newell), the local whiskey distiller, leaves town to try and find a way to save their corn. Maizy travels to Tampa, Florida, where she meets Gordy Jackson (John Behlmann), a con-man who claims he can help, but secretly thinks Cobb County might have riches he can take to settle his debts. When the two return, Gordy comes into conflict with both Beau and Lulu, although Lulu eventually falls for him.”
Add stellar turns from a team of sassy Storytellers who set the scene and comment (Grey Henson, Ashley D. Kelley) and Beau’s philosophical brother Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), whose observations and existential questions are probably the show’s best lines—as well as being quotable, flat-out jokes you can crack out of context—and there you have it. Tale as old as time indeed. The only spin is treatment.
But even though treatment is ultimately everything, not everything is for everybody. And there was a point in the proceedings—for both me and my companion—where we lost our hold on dramatic tension (such as it is) because the story moves are so diagrammatic. One could argue—convincingly—that the corniness is not only built into the premise, but mandated by it. So I don’t at all say Shucked nay. If the show wins awards, it will deserve them…it doesn’t skimp on doing what it does the right way, with the right people at the top of their game.
Just let yourself off the hook if you can’t give over completely, which you kinda have to do to go the distance. In which case you may admire it more than love it.
But I’ll say this much across the board: Its virtues are (probably) too insistent for you to hate it.