NEW YORK — Like an episode of “Hee Haw” written by Mel Brooks, the timely new musical “Shucked” opened Tuesday night at the Nederlander Theatre with more gags than every other current Broadway show put together.
Wittily to wit: “Momma used to say marriage is like a tornado. It starts off with a whole lot of banging and pounding and ends up with someone losing a house.”
“I just passed a huge squirrel, which is odd, because I don’t remember eating one.”
“If you get drunk before you get your driver’s license picture taken, you’ll look normal when they pull you over.”
Is Mr. Critic spoiling the fun? No siree, Bob. There are so many other one-liners in this show, you’ll barely remember this small sample when the rest come at ya’ like an 18-wheeler barreling through Branson, Missouri, and taking out all the dawdlers.
Robert Horn, the book writer, is one funny guy. We knew this from the Broadway adaptation of “Tootsie,” but this time around, Horn has not let the narrative necessities of the typical Broadway experience get in the way of his jokes. Imagine a joke writer approaching a dumpster and tipping up his trash can and you get a sense of the experience. “Shucked” ain’t based on a movie; it’s a vehicle for laughs. And snorts, giggles and rolled eyes are what it delivers. For good or ill.
Sure, there’s a plot of sorts and even a message. We’re in Cob County, located “Somewhere north of South and south of North,” and “a place where being from somewhere is who you are.” This community has always been surrounded by a giant wall of corn that apparently appeared around the time Noah floated his ark and that keeps those in, in, and those out, out.
Events in the show, which features characters with ticket names like Gordy (John Behlmann), Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), Beau (Andrew Durand), Lulu (Alex Newell), Storyteller 1 (Ashley D. Kelley) and Storyteller 2 (Grey Henson), revolve around heroine Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler), trampling those corn walls and having romantic misadventures in Tampa, the kind of city that surely would send anyone back to Cob County kicking and screaming.
At times, you feel like are watching a theme-park show at Dollywood, which is no knock on that slice of East Tennessee paradise. But Broadway veterans will also note the influence of prior musical comedies from “Finian’s Rainbow” to “Brigadoon” and “Schmigadoon!” although perhaps most notably, given the self-aware storytellers, “Urinetown,” another show that imagined a community with metaphor in mind.
If they gave out Tony Awards for the most mismatched book and score, “Shucked!” would slay all other contenders. In essence, you get a couple of hours of Horn’s signature howlers interspersed with a country-pop-vibed score by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. Of limited ambition, it offers a little suite of accessible ballads and specialty numbers.
And there are no bravura production numbers in director Jack O’Brien’s staging (well, save for a barrel-rolling in Act 2). This is a far more modest affair and O’Brien, a wily old hand at all this stuff, just concentrates on making the punters in the orchestra giggle. And no one who has experienced “Shucked!” in a full house could argue that he is anything less than successful in that endeavor. Talk about paradise for the post-Red Lobster crowd, cheerfully over-served.
Horn isn’t just selling jokes. (Just mostly.) He’s also sending a warm-hearted, can’t-we-all-just-get-along message in the form of a Broadway show that he clearly hopes can take a leaf out of Dolly Parton’s book and appeal to Boone County, Kentucky, as much as Brooklyn, New York. And it takes guts to tell as many jokes about race in America as “Shucked” unleashes.
His comedic template is very different, but Horn has Brooks’ crucial satiric philosophy and a good chunk of the great one’s gag-writing chops. Especially when paired with O’Brien, who is old enough not to give a darn, which is one of that master craftsman’s greatest assets at a time when most younger Broadway players are far too jittery about how things are going to go over on social media to take the risks required for big laughs.
The performances are, well, genial. I was especially tickled by Cahoon’s dry-roasted Peanut and Kelley is a big crowd pleaser. Innerbichler, the lead, is just as guileless as you’d want from a character named Maizy in a play set in a city of corn.
The show could have used a few more theatrics. Scott Pask’s set is like a giant barn and I kept waiting for a channeling of “Little Shop of Horrors” and some corn stalks to come crashing through the all-American walls we’ve built for ourselves.
Never happened, alas. Perhaps so much of the budget was spent on jokes, the shucks got shucked.
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“Shucked” plays at the Nederlander Theatre, 208 W. 41st St., New York; shuckedmusical.com.
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