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Summer may not have fully arrived for the start of the Open Air theatre’s season, but this Tony award-winning musical comedy delivers a burst of nourishing, laugh-out-loud sunshine. With a wisecrack-packed book by Robert Horn and a wry, country-inflected score by Grammy winners Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, it’s a fable of simple folk in the American south forced to turn outwards – to a charlatan from Florida, no less – when the corn crop around which their entire lives are based fails.
Jack O’Brien’s irresistibly eager-to-please production has a basic but stunning set by Scott Pask of a wonkily skeletal barn surrounded by cornstalks, and unspectacular hoedown choreography from Sarah O’Gleby. But as one character puts it: “There’s a cornfield of difference between simple and stupid.” I’m surprised Shucked did so well on Broadway, where I thought they preferred their musicals high-minded or razzamatazzy; but relentlessly chirpy gags and songs, the deliberate mix of naivete and snark from the cast, and the juxtaposition of rural and urban life sit perfectly in this leafy venue.
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It was a smart move by the creators to insulate this corn-centric show against accusations of corniness by corn-feeding it with a cornucopia of cornpone puns. We’re in insular, possibly inbred, definitely corn-bread Cob County (uh-huh) where Sophie McShera’s Maizy (yup) is about to marry her childhood sweetheart, Ben Joyce’s mulleted Beau (not actually a corn joke – try harder fellas).
When the crop from which they make food, whisky and a living withers, Maizy decides to venture into the outside world for help. Beau objects. “This isn’t an argument,” she ripostes. “I’m right and you’re just sayin’ things.” Unfortunately, the “corn doctor” she finds in Tampa, Matthew Seadon-Young’s Gordy, is a fake chiropodist in hock to the mob. For reasons that don’t withstand the briefest examination, he becomes convinced Cob County is studded with hidden mineral riches, and almost accidentally finds himself wooing Maizy to get there and get them.
This knowingly ridiculous story is winningly sold, with a good deal of winking and smirking, by the alchemical double-act of Monique Ashe-Palmer and Steven Webb as Storytellers 1 and 2, who double up as mobsters and gem experts. She’s brisk and sardonic, he’s warm and camp, like a pair of children’s TV presenters off-duty and three shots into the corn-liquor.
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McShera expresses charming wonderment as Maizy but her big number, Woman of the World, is immediately trounced by Beau’s Somebody Will, delivered by Joyce as if by a 70s teen idol. Seadon-Young’s Gordy is hapless rather than heartless, wafting around in his pistachio suit until nailed by Maizy’s gimlet-eyed cousin, one-woman corn-whisky distillery Lulu.
Georgina Onuorah uses every withering put-down and shriveling side-eye she’s given in this role to steal the show, and gives powerful voice to the best number, the raunchy, bluesy Independently Owned. Any remnants of attention are mopped up by Keith Ramsay as Beau’s wide-eyed brother Peanut, given to left-field, idiot-savant observations (“I believe that if you know more than four Metallica songs – you’re in Metallica”) and folksy memories (“I remember grandpa’s last words to us: ‘Are you boys still holding that ladder?’.”)
Indeed, for all the C&W bounce of the score it’s the quickfire gags you remember. “I knew this day would come: it’s on my calendar.” “Trying to figure you out is like asking a starfish for directions.” In the finale, a spoof of the typical hugging-and-learning moment, Gordy declares himself an a**hole. “Here,” says Maizy forgivingly, “we’re more interested in what’s INSIDE an a**hole.” A-maize-ing.
To 14 June, openairtheatre.com.
