REVIEW: Mirvish’s Shucked plants row after row of corny jokes
iPhoto caption: Members of the company of 'Shucked.' Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.
What humans do with corn might be the closest thing we have to alchemy. We distill it into fuel, ferment it into excellent poisons like bourbon, press it into microplastics, and liquify it into nutritionally suspect high-fructose corn syrup. Considering we can’t digest it, the weirdest thing we do with corn is eat it. Corn goes through yet another magical transformation in Shucked, a bombastically corny musical about a yellow-eared town called Cob County as it faces blight, now at Mirvish’s Princess of Wales Theatre.
Shucked opens on a threadbare barn interior that resembles both a vaulted A-frame church and the inside of a corn cob, with arched beams ribbing the space like husk lines (scenic design by Scott Pask). It kicks off with a high-energy, gospel-meets-pop full cast ensemble ode to corn, introducing its rural American setting, “where Roe v. Wade is an argument about the best way to cross a river.” From there, the pace — and wordplay — rarely let up.
The story centres Maizy (Canadian talent Danielle Wade), a sweet and twangy farm girl about to marry her sweetheart, Beau (Nick Bailey), when Cob County’s corn starts dying on the eve of their wedding. Determined to save the harvest before they say “I do,” she treks to the nearest metropolis — Tampa — despite county locals insisting that no city slicker could fix a country problem.
She finds a saviour in Gordy (Quinn VanAntwerp), a failed grifter turned podiatrist who styles himself as a “corn doctor.” Realizing that Cob County sits on valuable rocks, Gordy hatches a plan to swindle them out from under its nose and seduces Maizy along the way. Back home, Maizy confesses the kiss to Beau, the couple splits (but not for long), and Gordy’s scheme spirals until the rocks turn out to be worthless to him. But they’re worth something to the town: moving them frees the corn’s roots to slurp up water again.
Two narrators (Maya Lagerstam and Joe Moeller) function as a kind of folksy Greek chorus. They guide us through the action to fill in the passage of time, explain the characters’ motivations, and occasionally jump into scenes as comic side players. This playful, old-fashioned device adds a self-aware edge: the pair intermittently break the fourth wall to joke about some of Shucked’s choices, calling out things like the obviousness of Maizy’s name, their own range as actors playing multiple roles, or the show’s lightly glossed-over pioneer narrative.
That pre-emptive self-deprecation in narrative art forms is always an interesting feature to me. It acknowledges potential criticisms the audience could be making and confesses to them, but doesn’t change them. It’s a little bit like saying, “yes we know exactly what this is — but you can’t hold it against us because we said it first.”
Nearly every line of the script contains a joke and the sheer volume of them is a feat of its own kind. One recurring bit involves a character asking Beau’s brother Peanut (Mike Nappi), “what do you think?,” which prompts Peanut to stride to the front of the stage and deliver a string of zingers point blank, including this big crowd-pleaser: “I think diapers and presidents should be changed often — and for the same reason,” which, given the southerly president’s figurative bowel incontinence in office, went over very well.
But some jokes veer shockingly crude. At one point, Maizy’s cousin Lulu jokes about a lover sucking out a kidney stone. And others mock vulnerable hardships, like when one character jokes about having to use expired meth. The crowd was audibly cracking up, but to me, the relentless gags often landed awkwardly or piled up so densely they crowded out the space to even laugh at them.
That said, the performances are strong across the entire cast and everyone hits their archetypal notes. Wade’s Maizy radiates plucky optimism and never slips into the vapid blonde stereotype the script flirts with. Abraham’s Lulu is smoky in her sharp-tongued sass. And, with two thumbs firmly hooked over his novelty-sized belt buckle, Bailey’s Beau pours himself into stirring country ballads that go down easier than Maker’s Mark on ice.
Shucked sits somewhere between a cartoon for adults and a wholesome farm musical. It has a few dry kernels and a predictable storyline, but with its pun-stuffed script, poppy hoedowns, and ridiculous devotion to the cob, it’s a fun one for anyone who loves a good groan-inducing dad joke — and it’s a sweet reminder to resist that fool’s gold out yonder and remember what’s beautiful in your own backyard.
Shucked runs at the Princess of Wales Theatre until April 5. More information is available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Lindsey King
Lindsey King is a Toronto-based freelance writer and editor with bylines in Toronto Life, Maclean's, Canadian Business, Intermission, and The Creative Independent.
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