Can Alex Newell save ‘Shucked,’ Broadway’s high-fructose corn syrupy new musical?

The Rundown

What happens when the crops in Corn Cob County stop growing? Apparently, folks develop a GMO-modified sense of humor and start singin’ wistful melodies and rousing country anthems.

Shucked features music and lyrics by the high-profile (and queer) country songwriting team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, but Robert Horn’s (Tootsie) book, heavy with one-liners and not much else, fails to harvest the potential of the talented cast.

Those willing to spend triple digits for one knock-out song can at least witness Alex Newell (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, Glee) bring audiences to their feet in the upward-modulating barn-raiser “Independently Owned.”

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No Tea, No Shade

Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler) refuses to sit around while the town goes belly up due to a mysterious corn conundrum. Spoiler alert: If you think the decimated crops have anything to do with global warming or pesticides, you’re at the wrong show. She leaves fiancée Beau (Andrew Durand) behind, heads off to the big city of Tampa, and solicits the help of a grifter named Gordy (John Behlmann) posing as a corn doctor.

Shucked is unable to till the potentially fertile premise, however ridiculous, instead relying on Horn’s automated joke harvester. The musical’s shallow root system fails to build any relatable connection among its characters. Maizy and Beau’s only visible chemistry is that they finish one another’s sentences. She’s quick to fall for Gordy’s scam, plucked straight from The Music Man, further diminishing her agency as an independent thinker willing to go beyond the county line.

On the homestead, Maizy’s cousin Lulu (Alex Newell) laments that her whiskey-making business is about to go belly-up. At the same time, Beau’s brother, Peanut (Kevin Cahoon), and a town full of denim- and patchwork-wearing farmsteaders baffle at their unfortunate predicament. Nobody except for Maizy’s grandpa (Dwayne Clarke) appears over 35, adding further hurdles to the suspension of disbelief, with director Jack O’Brien missing a ripe opportunity to create a character-driven ensemble. And despite the presence of diverse queer identities among the creative team and cast, Horn leans into cliché, gay double-entréndres that land lazy rather than laughable.

But laugh they do. Admittedly, at the performance I attended, the audience lapped it up — when they weren’t sleeping. The patron sitting next to me alternated between napping and belly laughs, perking up to catch a one-liner, then dozing back off as if he was sitting in a recliner (minus the leg room at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre) watching Hee Haw reruns.

Patti LuPone may be belting, “I told you so!” from her New Jersey furnished basement after telling Variety last year, “I think we’ve spent — not we, but whoever’s in charge of, whatever — has actively dumbed down the audience.” 

Let’s Have a Moment

Shucked isn’t without its star turn. In fact, most songs telegraph the point with lighting designer Japhy Weideman focusing multiple spotlights on choreographer Sarah O’Gleby’s final tableaus for a “Clap Now!” cue.

But Alex Newell earns the accolades without technological assistance. As Maizy’s entrepreneurial cousin Lulu, Newell brings the audience to its feet with their Act I showstopper, “Independently Owned,” a smartly crafted tongue-twister with effortless vocal gymnastics that fans have come to expect.

Newell, who last appeared on Broadway in Once on This Island, is vocally magnetizing, while their character’s truth-telling one-liners speak to Shucked’s bigger problems, saying, “It’s amazing how only 26 letters of the alphabet can produce so much bullsh*t… (then, To Maizy) Fix your house, ‘cousin’!”

The Final Word

With a smart producing and marketing team, Shucked may find its audience. Lead producer Mike Bosner engineered a pre-opening strategy to pack the theatre with preview pricing, telling Broadway News, “Our currency is comedy, and laughter is infectious. That’s a very different experience if you are seeing a show like this with 500 people and it feels half-empty, or if it’s packed to the gills and you’re hearing everyone else go crazy around you.”

The show’s social media brims with punchy quotes like “Full of Crop!,” shout-outs to “Agricultural Pionears,” and more corn references than a Ree Drummond cookbook. Will Broadway audiences bite? Time will tell. If not, there’s always the opportunity for a potato sequel, Peeled.

Shucked plays on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre.

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