Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, til 14 June 2025

⭐⭐⭐

Lowest common denominator comedy lands enough hits to be entertaining. 

When I started In the Nosebleeds (almost exactly a year ago – happy anniversary ITN!), it wasn’t because I think my opinion on theatre (or film, or anything else) is worth more than anyone else’s. It was because I enjoy the process of working out on paper what I enjoyed or didn’t enjoy about a particular work. Some plays – like Farewell Mister Haffman or When it Happens to You, for example – are real thinkers, and it’s rewarding to spend some time pondering the ideas and themes the creators were exploring. On the other hand, some plays don’t really require much thought at all. It’s not a bad thing – fairy floss doesn’t have much substance but it can still be nice once in a while. Shucked is definitely a fairy floss kind of show. 

Shucked is set in the rootin-tootin-all-American Cob County, where cheery locals sing in a Southern drawl of their love for the foodstuff that is their life and livelihood: corn. Seriously, these guys are obsessed with corn. They love their lives so much that no-one has ever bothered to explore beyond the high walls of maize that encircle the town. Until, that is, the precious crop begins to mysteriously die and our brave young heroine Maizy must defy the wishes of her sweetheart Beau to venture forth and seek help. Unfortunately, her naivete sees her overawed by the modern world and easy prey for seasoned con artist Gordy. Tensions rise as this shyster sees his chance and the world of Cob County is threatened by outside forces.

I have to hand it to Shucked for presenting a pretty original story – though it hits a lot of familiar beats (love rivals, small-town girl in the big city, best friends falling out, etc) it’s mixed in with plenty of whacky, unexpected elements (the corn obsession, gangsters, a strange fixation on the city of Tampa, Florida – to name a few). And the music from Grammy winners Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally certainly has moments of brilliance – there are a couple of genuine bangers which, performed excellently by Georgina Onuorah as Lulu and Ben Joyce as Beau, completely bring the house down. The tunes are accompanied by some pretty entertaining and dynamic choreography from Myles Brown that is unquestionably fun to watch.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh during Shucked; writer Robert Horn seems to have taken a ‘throw enough shit and something will stick’ approach to the comedy, and hey: some of the shit does stick. I think what works best is the physical comedy – for example, Monique Ashe-Palmer and Steven Webb as the ‘storytellers’ (narrators) do a great slapstick bit switching rapidly between two phone calls. But I’d also be lying if I omitted to mention that there are a lot of really, really bad jokes in this show. There’s a real surfeit of punnery, which stretched even my high tolerance for the art form. Some of the worst gags come from Beau’s brother Peanut, who seems to be written into the show solely to do stand-up one-liners – Horn doesn’t even bother to make some of his jokes fit in with the story, he’s just there to shamelessly mug for laughs. There’s some unexpectedly blue humour as well, which is fine when it’s actually funny, but it often isn’t; there’s one joke in particular that is ostensibly about oral sex but doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than three seconds. 

In fact, the creators of Shucked seem to be really banking on the idea that you’ll switch off about 80% of your brain when you take your seat. The show seems a little bit muddled about what message it’s trying to impart – and I’m not talking about any grand political messages, just a basic ‘moral of the story’ type schtick that’s not very well formed, despite the storytellers repeatedly referring to the proceedings as a ‘fable’. One of Maizy’s early songs is pretty lil’ ditty lamenting why the townspeople build walls rather than windows – seemingly setting us up for a final lesson about the importance of open-mindedness and acceptance of outsiders. And yet, the one outsider Maizy brings into Cob County is a definitive baddie, with the townspeople essentially proved right that she was too naive and should’ve just stayed at home. It leaves a bit of a question mark over the happy ending that obviously rounds out the proceedings – but only if you’re still bothering to think critically at this point.

The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is a gorgeous venue, and an apt home for a play with a rural setting – Ben Davies’ set is a brilliantly skew-whiff barn. On a clear day it’s wonderful to watch the sun set over the stage. It’s well worth a visit whatever you’re seeing, and if you’ve got a high tolerance for cheese, this corny musical (sorry) might just be a good enough excuse to head over there.

Visit the Open Air Theatre website for tickets to Shucked.