Show Spotlight: Corny Jokes and Country Music Galore in Shucked
Shucked is the new Tony Award®–winning musical comedy The Wall Street Journal calls “flat out hilarious!” And nobody knows funny like economists. Featuring a book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn (the comic genius behind Tootsie and Designing Women), a score by the Grammy® Award–winning songwriting team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, and directed by Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien (Hairspray), this corn-fed, corn-bred American musical is sure to satisfy your appetite for great musical theater.
Shucked a completely new story set in Cobb County, an imaginary slice of American heartland populated with the multi-racial descendants of pilgrims who fled the strict Puritans and somehow managed to find a plot of farmland uninhabited by Native Americans. The hero is Maizy, who is all set to marry childhood sweetheart Beau when something inexplicably goes wrong. The corn, the cash crop from which Cobb County residents make pretty much everything, starts dying.
Maizy is the only resident of her closed-off community willing to embark on a journey to the outside world in search of a solution. She finds herself in the big city — not New York City or Los Angeles, but Tampa, Florida. Starstruck by the day-glow colors and Hawaiian shirts, Maizy naively falls under the spell of con man Gordy who thinks Cobb County holds the solution to the debt he owes to criminals. Gordy convinces some of Maizy's neighbors that he can solve their corn problem, but Beau is unconvinced.
The humor is non-stop and quick-witted as is typical of Horn. Beau’s brother, Peanut, dishes out a lot of the funniest lines as pearls of wisdom throughout the show. Horn has said that he believes the show works so well right now because of where we are as a nation, post-COVID. “People don’t want to be lectured right now — they want to laugh. You are watching people open their hearts in a way you didn’t expect through comedy. “
Shucked songwriters Clark and McAnally bring a country-rock spin to this musical. These Grammy-winning country music experts are known for writing catchy yet emotional hits for Kacey Musgraves, Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, Reba McEntire and many more. The duo has packed their first Broadway score with lots of fun and even deeper feels. The standout song is "Independently Owned," a showstopper turns the American dream of small business entrepreneurship into an anthem of Black female independence.
“I hope (people) walk away (from this show) laughing, and I hope they walk away looking at the world a little differently, looking at people who are different than them a little differently,” Horn said. “One of the things we said while working on Shucked was: We’re never going to fix the world. But if we can heal it a little, we’re very happy.”
Show Dates & Times
Tuesday, Dec. 17 at 7 pm
Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 7 pm
Thursday, Dec. 19 at 1:30 pm & 7 pm
Friday, Dec. 20 at 8 pm
Saturday, Dec. 21 at 2 pm & 8 pm
Sunday, Dec. 22 at 2 pm
Recommended for ages 10+. Contains adult themes, moments of adult language and a harvest of corny innuendo.