Theatre in Review: Shucked (Nederlander Theatre)

	Photo: Mathew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

The you-know-what is as high as an elephant's eye in Shucked, a gleeful pileup of cornpone gags and countrified melodies dedicated to the proposition that weary Broadway audiences desperately need an uncomplicated good time. Rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of Moonshine: That Hee-Haw Musical (which came to grief out of town), it's an industrial-grade harvest of hokum and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to laughing a good seventy-five percent of the time. A torrent of Olsen-and-Johnson-style gags with a sly little moral tucked inside, it's wildly silly, at times willfully vulgar, but it's the work of professionals and it knows what it's about.

Welcome to Corn Cob County, a rural hamlet that no one ever leaves; the local economy is established in an opening number extoling the joys of everything from corn flakes to corn liquor. (To soothe tender sensibilities, the town's origin story involves "a group of disparate, diverse Pilgrims...escaping Separatist Puritan oppression, landed on miles of unclaimed, non-Native American owned land.") But trouble comes to this niblet Brigadoon when the crops start to fail. ("It was an unsolved mystery," says one of our narrators. "Which, in fact, are just mysteries.") The bad news halts the marriage of ingenues Beau and Maizy, especially when the latter does the unthinkable and flees in search of a solution. Her trek takes her to, of all places, Tampa, where she gloms on to Gordy, a sleazy faux podiatrist who specializes in, yes, corn removal with a side business in bedding his female patients. Gordy, in debt to the mob for his gambling habit and convinced that the purple rocks littering the Corn Cob County landscape are jewels in the rough, poses as an agricultural expert, planning on fleecing the locals à la Harold Hill.

It's the thinnest of premises, and it gets thinner in a second act that runs perilously low on invention, but the cast puts over this nonsense with the straightest of faces and if you have a taste for that old-time vaudeville, sooner or later your resistance will crack. Robert Horn's book carpet-bombs the audience with one-liners: Those purple rocks, we are informed, "gather in clusters, like single women in their thirties." A skeptical Black local describes Gordy thusly: "tall, handsome, teeth so white they could join a country club." Threaded through the action are the almost Dadaist observations of the bizarre Corn Cobian known as Peanut: "That Luralean just invited me to her chicken's birthday party. Right! Like I have time for that kind of crazy, and on the same day my goats are getting married!?"

You'll have to steel yourself for some groaners about proctologists, burial rites, masturbation, and swimming pool urination, but even some of these get by, thanks to director Jack O'Brien, who establishes an easy-going atmosphere that preserves plenty of breathing room. He has also rustled up a cast of charmers who maximize their laughs, deftly bury the feebler gags, and sell the tuneful score with brio. In an era of musicals dedicated to the hard sell, O'Brien still understands that audiences can be wooed, not subdued.

Arguably, the production's biggest find is Broadway debutante Caroline Innerbichler as the guileless, yet determined Maizy; she's a delight, especially when raving about the glamorous qualities of Tampa. ("It was magical. No matter where you go, there's always an old person about to be in your way. There were dogs in strollers and kids on leashes.") Petite, perky, and with just a hint of steel, she's rather like a younger Julie White and she makes a big impression here. The talented Andrew Durand finally gets a leading man role worthy of his talents as Beau, showing off an impressive belt and delivering his slow-on-the-uptake comic bits with perfect timing. As Peanut, Kevin Cahoon is like a perverted Don Knotts, squinting into the middle distance and expressing below-the-belt pensées in his best cracker-barrel fashion. Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley make an ideal pair of narrators, stepping into various supporting roles. (He throws away good lines and bad with equal aplomb and she lands a joke about Plan B that got extended applause at the performance I attended.) As Maizy's cousin Lulu, a no-nonsense, man-averse whiskey entrepreneur, Alex Newell heats up the stage with the score's biggest showstopper, "Independently Owned."

The score, by the team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, is a jolt of pure honky-tonk that, crucially, provides respite from the otherwise nonstop fooling around. Maizy's ballads, including "Walls," a lament about the insular nature of down-home life, and "Maybe Love," in which she wonders if Gordy is the man for her, are touching exercises that easily win us over. "Somebody Will," Beau's declaration of independence from Maizy, reliably brings down the house. And the Bible Belt takes an amusing beating in a cheeky hoedown titled "We Love Jesus." ("He turned water into wine/We turn corn into shine/Yeah, we love Jesus, but we drink a little.")

The main evidence of blight in this corn crib is a quirk of Horn's book that undermines the show's overall effect. Having established Gordy as the show's go-to villain, Horn undermines him by a) letting him off the hook with his creditors and b) and establishing that the purple rocks are worthless -- information that is conveyed to the audience only. (John Behlmann's lean-and-hungry looks and goofball manner are a big help, nonetheless.) These developments remove any sense of peril, leaving the rest of the show to focus on getting Maizy back with Beau and resolving the standoff between Gordy and Lulu, who can't keep their hands off each other. The climax, a drunken wedding rehearsal dinner where the truth comes tumbling out, is awfully pro forma, the stuff of a hundred other musicals.

Still, O'Brien has shaped Shucked into a good-hearted parable of red and blue America, both of which, the show says, need to calm down and listen to each other. And, as always, he gets excellent work from his collaborators. Sarah O'Gleby's choreography includes a corn cob frolic that recalls the Oceana Roll Dance in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, and a nifty balancing act, involving barrels and planks, in "Best Man Wins." Scott Pask's rattletrap barn set, which looks like it survived several tornadoes and maybe an earthquake or two, is amusingly augmented by an enormous "Welcome to Tampa" sign. Japhy Weideman's lighting supplies buttery sunshine, gorgeous purple skies, and rainbow-colored chases in abundance. Tilly Grimes' costumes are full of clever details, including Beau's intricately patched-up jeans, Gordy's mint-green silk suit, and Lulu's body-hugging ensembles; she gets a major assist from Mia Neal's wig designs. John Shivers' sound design is a cut above the competition in terms of intelligibility. (At my performance, several chorus solo lines in "We Love Jesus" were lost, but glitches will happen.)

A sometimes-unstable mix of high-flying wit and lowbrow gagging, Shucked defies criticism by virtue of its sheer good nature, firmly reminding us that we all inhabit the same community -- and it's high time we learned to live together. A utopian idea, yes, but one we can't hear too often. As Lulu puts it, "Oh honey, family is telling someone to go to hell, then worrying they get there safely." I couldn't put it better myself. --David Barbour