Shucked musical: A smash at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
Regents Park Open Air Theatre is appropriately dotted with stands serving freshly grilled corn for the arrival of Shucked, a musical obsessed with both corn on the cob and corny jokes.
If a rootin’, tootin’, country and western-inflected musical about crop farming sounds like a strange choice to kick off the tenure of Drew McOnie as artistic director of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, don’t be fooled: Shucked arrives in the UK off the back of nine Tony nominations and a sold-out US tour. This is a musical that’s serious about being silly, employing some of the finest voices in theatreland to sing some of the daftest songs you’re likely to hear all year.
It takes place in Cob County, a remote corn-farming town where nobody ever visits and nobody ever leaves. This insular existence is threatened when the corn crop fails, leading our heroine Maizy (naturally) to strike out into the big, bad metropolis of Tampa, Florida in search of a solution, leaving her distraught fiancee behind.
Writer Robert Horn intensively farms groan-inducing jokes, the one liners coming at you with the relentless pace of a modern sitcom. Some of them are brand new, others as old as the hills but delivered with enough country bumpkin charm you can’t help but smile (a case in point: “I just passed a huge squirrel, which is odd cos I don’t remember eating one…”).
It’s also a toe-tappin’, line dancin’ hit when it comes to the songs. It’s relatively rare that you find yourself humming the tunes from a new musical on the walk home but Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally pull it off, marrying scatological silliness – “It’s the same going in as it is going out!” – with real charm and sophistication. Perhaps the best voice among a strong cast is Maizy’s beau – called Beau – Ben Joyce, who sings with a gravelly Americana that could fill a stadium.
The story feels a little incidental after all that, a fairly straightforward tale about the power of true love, the perils of isolationism and why exploiting people is ultimately self-defeating. But you hardly need War and Peace when you have a musical this fun. On a balmy night, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, with its verdant surrounds and wood pigeons crashing chaotically overhead, is the perfect stage for the most surprisingly brilliant new musicals I’ve seen in ages.
