‘Shucked’ review: Broadway’s best new musical

Color me “Shucked” — sorry, shocked.

For I have finally seen the new musical that popped open Tuesday night at the Nederlander Theatre. 

The one that has been inundating straphangers in subway stations for months with ubiquitous yellow corn cob posters as if it’s trying to be Broadway’s answer to “Shen Yun” or “Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar.” 

More than one mystified person has asked me if the show is actually real.

Well, it is real. And, you know what, it’s real good too. If you’re fond of laughing, “Shucked” is the best new musical of the Broadway season so far. 

The Southern comfort show, with a tuneful country score by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally and a superb book by Robert Horn, is just so damn funny. 

If any of the outrageous yokel characters open their mouths to do anything but sing, 99% of the time they will deliver a winning joke or pun. The receptive audience sits in a state of perpetual giggle, with heads bobbing up and down like buoys. 

An example of the sense of humor: A scamp named Peanut (Kevin Cahoon, brilliant) is a walking Poor Richard’s Almanac who colorfully announces his unhinged, universal truths as we howl back. “I think if you have time to jump in front of a bullet for someone,” he says to the group, “they have time to move.”

But what is “Shucked”? The premise is as zany as the zingers. The musical, at once traditional and cool, is set in fictional Corn Cob County, a small-town Southern oasis surrounded by corn that’s as high as an elephant’s eye. 

But when their all-sustaining crop starts to die (we actually watch the plant wither like a cheesy old Disneyland ride), spunky Maizy (Caroline Innerbichler) sets out to the “big city” to find a hero to save the corn.

The big city is Tampa, Florida.

So sings Gordy (John Behlmann), the podiatrist Maizy meets (and misinterprets as her saving grace) because of a neon sign that reads “Corn Doctor”: “Tampa! If you can’t afford Orlando or Savannah!” 

But Gordy is secretly a sleazy fraud, who both swindles and romances wide-eyed Maizy in the style of Harold Hill from “The Music Man” or Bill Starbuck in “The Rainmaker.” Uh oh, she also happens to be engaged to a lanky farmer back home named Beau (Andrew Durand). 

The motive for Gordy’s scheme is that he believes Cob County’s soil is rich with a valuable mineral, and he wants to steal it. 

The story, which unfolds on Scott Pask’s aptly askew barn set, is a cinch to follow thanks to a pair of casual narrators, played by Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley. Henson, who played Damian in Broadway’s “Mean Girls,” is a meme come to life. He gets huge laughs, quickly, with modern attitude.          

And don’t get on the wrong side of Maizy’s cousin Lulu (Alex Newell), a single-and-proud-of-it corn whisky maker who is skeptical of outsider Gordy and belts the rousing song “Independently Owned.” Newell is a phenomenal singer, and shakes the crowd into submission with Clark and McAnally’s number that summons the smiley defiance of Dolly Parton.

Innerbichler’s Maizy is comparably guileless to in-your-face Lulu, but her take is nonetheless unique. If Broadway is known as a home to Disney princesses, this actress has more in common with a heroine from a smarter Pixar movie. And as her Beau is Durand, whose appealing strangeness and stellar pop voice finally get a deserving vehicle. 

They croon a score that is always, at the very least, likable, but other standout solos are Maizy’s “Maybe Love” and Beau’s “I’ll Be Okay.” A group number for the boys called “The Best Man Wins” in Act Two is an edgier “Brotherhood of Man” from “How To Succeed.”

Jack O’Brien skillfully directs the comedy to come off both precise and off-the-cuff, and I was tickled by choreographer Sarah O’Gleby’s ear-of-corn take on “La Vie Bohème.”

However, just as the case was with “Tootsie” in 2019, Horn’s book is the indisputable star. The writer is known for his work on TV’s “Designing Women,” and brings that same sit-com sensibility to the stage. Thank God for that. The second act is, admittedly, not quite as propulsive as the first, but wraps things up like a tamale.

“Shucked” is not the only new show on Broadway with laughs, but it is the only unapologetic comedy in the field. There are no “but”s here. “Such-and-such musical is hilarious, but preachy.” Or “Whatsitcalled is funny, but makes you think about your own mortality.” 

All you think about at “Shucked” is what a terrific time you’re having. Nothing corny about that.