In the musical ‘Shucked,' corn is the joke, but also a way to unite people

Boston Globe

03-04-2025

When 'Shucked' debuted in New York in 2023, the all-original musical arrived with an air of mystery, with its ubiquitous bright yellow half-shucked ear-of-corn logo. Many theatergoers were perplexed, wondering, 'What is this show all about?' Soon, audiences were falling head-over-heels for its parade of puns, sharp-edged humor, country and bluegrass-flavored score, and heartrending message of love and acceptance.
'Shucked' went on to be nominated for nine Tony awards, including Best Musical, with
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Set in the corn-crazy rural outpost of Cob County and narrated by two Storytellers (Tyler Joseph Ellis and Maya Lagerstam), 'Shucked' is a 'farm-to-fable' musical that finds sweethearts Beau (Jake Odmark) and Maizy (Danielle Wade) planning their wedding just as all the county's corn begins to die off. To save the town, plucky Maizy sets off for the big city of Tampa, to the objections of a frustrated Beau, to find a solution for the wilting corn. There, she locates a 'corn doctor' named Gordy (Quinn Vanantwerp), who's really a podiatrist, to help her heal Cob County's beloved cash crop. But it turns out Gordy is actually a con man in debt to the mob, and he sees Maizy and the mineral-rich town as the solution to his problems.
Mike Nappi as Peanut in "Shucked."
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
When Maizy brings Gordy back to Cob County, her no-nonsense cousin and best friend Lulu (Miki Abraham), who runs the local whiskey distillery, sees straight through this grifter's lies, but starts to develop a soft spot for him. She also sings the show's barn-burning anthem, 'Independently Owned.' Then there's Beau's sweet-natured brother Peanut (Mike Nappi), who charms with his aww-shucks persona and deadpan quips.
'It's a story about how change is not as scary as we think it is and we have so much more capacity for love than we think we do,' says Abraham, who plays Lulu on tour and was part of the original Broadway cast. 'Sometimes we can be set in our ways and set in our thinking, but growth and change is really what life is about.'
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Inspired by classic musicals like 'The Music Man,' 'Oklahoma!,' and 'Brigadoon,' the show toys with the tropes of musical comedy—the small town, the conman, the young lovers—and gives them a unique spin. But it's important, Horn says, that they never make fun of the characters.
'People would wait outside of the stage door afterwards and say to us, 'I'm from the Midwest or from the South, and I saw myself and my community on that stage,'' he says. 'We realized we had tapped into something without condescending and making fun of people, but celebrating the differences of who we are in this country.'
Indeed, the show
blends snarky irreverence and heartfelt affection, wholesomeness with a smidge of the devilishly ribald—whether it's Maizy's grandpa saying of his deceased wife, 'She was a good woman who died doing what she loved; making toast in the bathtub' or the Storytellers calling Cob County 'a place where Roe versus Wade is just a debate about the best way to cross a small river.'
Horn is no-holds-barred in his joke-spinning,
Comedy and laughter, Horn attests, was 'a survival mechanism' he relied on to make it through a difficult childhood. 'I make jokes out of everything. That's just the way my mind works.'
Quinn VanAntwerp as Gordy and Miki Abraham as Lulu in "Shucked."
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
The seeds for 'Shucked' were first sown when Horn and producers from Opry Entertainment began developing a musical based on the cornpone 1969-93 variety series 'Hee Haw.' Horn met with various Nashville-based songwriters, but Clark and McAnally, who had written hit songs for country stars like Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert, felt different.
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'Within the first five minutes there was this chemistry and common bond between us, and we knew we had to work together,' Horn says of the three openly-gay artists. 'We know what it's like to feel like an outcast or ostracized at times.'
When his twin sister passed away a few years ago, Clark called Horn up to offer her condolences and support. ''I'm your sister now,'' he recalls her saying.
For Clark, Broadway had always been a dream. 'I love musical theater. So it was a bucket list for me to write a musical,' she says. 'But as a Nashville songwriter, I never really thought I'd get a chance to do it.'
The trio's initial foray, 'Moonshine: The Hee Haw Musical,' debuted at Dallas Theater Center in 2015. But the cornpone show didn't work, Horn says, because it lacked a compelling story and a resonant message, so they set it aside. A few years later, the group reassembled with the idea of starting from scratch. They kept two songs from 'Moonshine' and some of the jokes, but most of the script 'fell away,' Horn says. Tony Award-winning director Jack O'Brien ('Hairspray') joined the team and urged them to raise the stakes and give the new story more gravitas, Horn says. 'He never wanted the show to be so light that it floated away.'
The resulting show 'became something more true to us and who we are as artists,' says Horn, who's now working on a stage adaptation of the 1997 Disney film 'Hercules.'
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Ultimately, the 'Shucked' takeaway is about learning to 'accept people who are different than you,' Horn says. 'I put that up on the wall in the rehearsal room, because that was the message we kept wanting to come back to.'
The 'Shucked' journey was a long and winding road that consumed a decade of its creators' lives. But hit-makers Clark and McAnally are taking a different outlook for a new musical they're working on with Horn, adapted from a movie that was inspired by a true story. 'I'm not so concerned about the finish line now,' Clark said. 'I can enjoy the process of discovering these characters and writing these songs. The first time, Shane and my focus was really, 'How do we get this thing to Broadway?' Because we hadn't done it before.'
'I've got to see so many of my dreams come true, but I don't know if I've ever been higher than I was when 'Shucked' opened in previews on Broadway,' Clark adds. 'It was a really great surprise that people embraced us.'
SHUCKED
Book by Robert Horn, music and lyrics by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, presented by Broadway in Boston. At: Citizens Opera House, April 8-20. Tickets: from $40;