REVIEW: SHUCKED—Segerstrom Center for the Arts
- TheShowReport
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 10 hours ago
A Corn-Pone Musical Full of Rural Humor, that Finds Laughs in a Worrisome Alliance Between a Hick and a Huckster
COSTA MESA—NOVEMBER 11, 2025
Wisecracks — one-liners — puns. Phrase it any way you like, after seeing SHUCKED, the anomalous Broadway musical tour about corn that opened on Tuesday night at Segerstrom Center for the Arts, you may think you’ve just seen a Gary Delaney or Milton Jones comedy special instead on HBO.
For more than two hours, it pelts you with piffle so egregious — not just puns but also dad jokes, double entendres and booby-trapped retorts — that, forced into submission, you eventually give in and succumb to gelastic seizures and uncontrollable belly laughs.
Many of the puns, or actually ALL of the puns are about corn, from the title down. The story is set in fictional Cob County, where the locals, long isolated from the rest of the world by a wall of “cornrows,” live in a perfect hominy of entrenched dopiness. Or at least they do until all their corn starts dying.
That’s when our plucky heroine — obviously called Maizy (Danielle Wade) — dares to seek help in the great beyond. Jeopardizing her imminent wedding to the brawny but xenophobic Beau (Nick Bailey) and ignoring the advice of her cousin, Lulu (Miki Abraham), she heads to Tampa. In that decadent metropolis, she seeks agricultural assistance from Gordy, a tall, big-city con man posing as a podiatrist that somehow she misconstrues as a “corn doctor.” Being grifty, Gordy (Quinn Vanantwerp) returns to Cob County with Maizy (not so much to cure the crop as to reap the wealth he thinks lies beneath it) to harvest a vast outcropping of precious gemstones.
Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark, who composed the show’s music and wrote the lyrics, are two of Nashville’s most successful and in-demand musicians. He’s produced 39 songs that has reached No. 1 on the Billboard country chart; she’s had 11 Grammy nominations. And it’s expertly directed by the multiple Tony Award winning Director Jack O’Brien (“Hairspray”), who has also directed Broadway's “The Roomate,” starring Patti LuPone & Mia Farrow.
Book writer Robert Horn (“Tootsie”), with his fine husk of a plot, has encased this show as an endearing parable about city folks learning to appreciate the corn-fed wisdom of the heartland. Unfortunately, Mr. Horn also gets the credit for germinating all the randy corn puns and dad jokes in SHUCKED as well. Mr. Horn, however, comes by his unique blend of comedy through an honest inheritance. His mother was Ed Sullivan’s secretary, and his grandfather, a Bell Telephone engineer, was also a vaudeville dancer, and introduced him to heavy doses of borscht belt comedy.
So, it’s all about corn. It's really this show’s reason for being, a sort of maize-on d’ear-tre. In fact, this is a delightfully full-throated, countrified musical based around the U.S.’s favorite heavily subsidized fructose-rich grain. And our heroine Maizy (who is gullible yet determined) is on a serious quest to Tampa to not only find herself but find a fix the sudden and mysterious illness affecting her town’s cash crop. Maizy's "Travelin' Song" about the great metropolis where “everyone’s a Tina or a Tamara, a bleach and platinum blonde extravaganza!” — shows a clear debt to "The Book of Mormon."
Yes, SHUCKED may trade on all kinds of trite wisdom and low humor, but it’s definitely hard not to laugh at. Beau’s brother, Peanut (Mike Nappi, who plays a fraction of a half-wit), who’s almost purely a joke-delivery vehicle, fires off bullet lists of random cracks as if he has been lobotomized by the rubes of “Hee Haw.” “I think if you can pick up your dog with one hand,” Peanut twangs, “you own a cat.” The jokes are as broad as possible, and they often veer into the blue side — not quite there, but just lewd enough to startle.
The storyline around the minor love complications (as Miki Abraham's Lulu falls for Gordy even though Gordy is romancing Maizy) are as knotty as noodles, but to help smooth out those knots are a charismatic pair of winky storytellers (Maya Lagerstam and Joe Moeller) who stroll through regularly to keep the story progressing and the humor flowing. They even provide a little flippancy at the goofy plot and makes sure everyone gets on the particular comedic frequency of SHUCKED’S “farm to fable.”
Luckily, Ms. Abraham turns Lulu, a corn-whiskey distiller and freelance hell-raiser, into a full-blown comic creation, which is to say a serious person who puts comedy to a purpose. If her character dialogue seems wittier, there’s probably a twofold reason: one, it engages the story, and two, because of the intentionality of Ms. Abraham’s delivery. Flirting with, but also threatening Gordy, Lulu says, “The last thing I wanna do is hurt you.” She pauses and locks eyes with him. “So, we’ll get to that.”
Interestingly enough, Lulu also gets the show’s best song, a barnburner of a feminist anthem called “Independently Owned.” (“No disrespect to Miss Tammy Wynette,” she sings, “I can’t stand by my man, he’ll have to stand by me.”) Ms. Abraham — having absorbed the whole vocal thesaurus of diva riffs, shouts, gurgles and growls — stops the show, while delivering some of the funniest lyrics of the night. “I don’t need a man for flatteries / I got a corncob and some batteries.” And right after the ovation, I found myself wondering what such a huge talent could do with a more commensurate role, like Effie in “Dreamgirls.”
In the end, SHUCKED wants to bring the country together over corn — and that’s a fantasy as wide-eyed and naïve as SHUCKED’s own hero, Danielle Wade's Maizy. But, like her, the production does contain a few kernels of wisdom. The proof is in the fact that by the end of the show, everyone around you is out of their seats clapping with stomach-hurting, tears-inducing laughter. Its aims are simple and direct and there’s a happy conclusion before you have room to digest it all. It was fun, it was a real romp and you consumed it all before you knew it. And to that end, SHUCKED goes in one end and out the other wholly itself. Just like corn.
SEGERSTROM CENTER FOR THE ARTS PRESENTS — SHUCKED, A New Musical Comedy; by Tony Award winner ROBERT HORN, and a Score by Grammy Award winners, Tony Award nominees and Nashville music superstars BRANDY CLARK and SHANE MCANALLY. Directed by JACK O’BRIEN; With Choreography by SARAH O’GLEBY; Music Supervision, Orchestrations, and Arrangements by 2023 Tony Award, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award nominee JASON HOWLAND; Music Direction by NICK WILLIAMS; Scenic Design by Tony Award winner SCOTT PASK; Costume Design by 2023 Drama Desk Award nominee TILLY GRIMES; Lighting Design by Tony Award nominee JAPHY WEIDEMAN; Sound Design by Tony Award winner JOHN SHIVERS; Wig Design by Academy Award winner and Emmy Award@ winner MIA NEAL; Production Stage Manager ALAN D. KNIGHT.
The cast includes MIKI ABRAHAM as Lulu; NICK BAILEY as Beau; MAYA LAGERSTAM as Storyteller 1; JOE MOELLER as Storyteller 2; MIKE NAPPI as Peanut; QUINN VANANTWERP as Gordy; DANIELLE WADE as Maizy; ELIJAH CALDWELL as Grandpa; KYLE SHERMAN as Tank; ZACH COSSMAN; CECILY DIONNE DAVIS; JADEN DOMINIQUE; RYAN FITZGERALD; DOMINIQUE KENT; CELESTE ROSE; KYLE SHERMAN; NICK RAYNOR; SEAN CASEY FLANAGAN; CARLY CAVIGLIA; AUDREY CARDWELL; MALLORIE SIEVERT.
SHUCKED will be playing in SEGERSTROM HALL from November 11th – 23rd. Tickets for SHUCKED, starting at $39, are available for purchase online at scfta.org, in person at 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, and by phone at 714.556.2787.
CHRIS DANIELS
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT REVIEWER
THE SHOW REPORT
