‘Shucked’ musical comedy at CIBC Theatre impressively corny in Chicago

When puns take center stage – as well as the left and right sides of the stage – you’ve got my attention. “Shucked,” a musical about the residents of fictional, corn-flourishing Cob County, is in Chicago at the CIBC Theatre for a much-too-brief touring production stop, and if you want to laugh more than you have in a long time, get tickets now. “Shucked” is simply an a-maize-ingly funny show.

When it was on Broadway, “Shucked” was nominated for nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical (by Robert Horn, who won the Tony a few years earlier for the book of “Tootsie”) and Best Original Score Written for the Theatre (by Nashville’s Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally).

The plot of this fable – or as one of the two Storytellers puts it – a “farm to fable” tale involves a community surrounded by cornfields in which the stalks serve as walls to the outside world so no one ever comes to, or leaves, Cob County.

Until one day, that is, when the wedding of childhood sweethearts Maizy (Danielle Wade playing our heroine) and Beau (Jake Odmark) is interrupted as their beloved corn starts dying for no apparent reason. (“It was an unsolved mystery, which was – in fact – just a mystery.”) While Maizy’s fellow citizens want to continue to “live as we choose in perfect hominy” (one of many intended puns), Maizy is willing to venture out into the real world to get help. She disagrees that leaving would be a grave mistake: “A grave mistake was buryin’ grandma on a slope.”

As she bravely goes out on her own, she arrives in – of all places – Tampa, Florida, where she mistakenly thinks Gordy Jackson, a “corn doctor,” can solve her agricultural problems. Gordy (Quinn VanAntwerp) is actually a foot doctor and con artist whose past is catching up with him after a horse race tip to mobster “Big Willie” goes awry. (“It came in at 20 to 1. The other horses came in at 12:30.”) When he sees Maizy’s bracelet – made of apparently valuable stones found in the ground of Cob County – he convinces her after a very brief courtship to take him back so he can potentially cure the corn problem. His real motivation, though, is to be there just long enough to flee with the stones and “get better or I’ll end up deader,” as he eloquently puts it in an Act I song, “Bad.”

When Gordy arrives in Cob County with Maizy, more than one of Maizy’s friends is suspicious of the outsider, including Beau; Maizy’s best friend and cousin Lulu (Miki Abraham); and Beau’s simple-minded brother, Peanut (Mike Nappi), whose dialogue almost always requires a pause for audience laughter (“I just passed a large squirrel, which is odd because I don’t recall eating one”).

Storyteller 1 (Maya Lagerstam) and Storyteller 2 (Tyler Joseph Ellis) also get their share of chuckles, but, in reality, Horn’s script shares the humor via almost every character (Maizy’s grandfather fondly remembers his late wife when he first met her as having had “the body of a 30-year-old [pause] sofa”).

It’s important to note that some of the dialogue is not appropriate for young kids (jokes about sperm banks and sex), but for those in their teens and older, this show is the perfect remedy for the winter blues.

Song highlights include:

• “Walls,” a Maizy solo where she talks herself into looking for “a window, not a wall” before leaving the security of her lifetime home to go to the big city

• The aforementioned “Bad,” which shows a pre-Cob County Gordy as a Harold Hill-type con man who doesn’t realize yet how his life could be better

• “Independently Owned,” a solo by Lulu in which she proudly boasts of her happiness at being a corn whiskey small business owner who doesn’t need a man

• “I Do,” a creative quartet (Maizy, Beau, Lulu and Gordy) in which unexpected support is given to a prospective bride and groom working on their wedding vows

Under the direction of Jack O’Brien, who recently received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award, “Shucked” is what the Roy Clark/Buck Owens-led “Hee Haw” TV show might be if you added a bit of a plot and put it on stage with songs that bring you closer to the feelings of the characters. If you can’t tell, I think this is one corny musical you should bring your ears to.

• Paul Lockwood is a communications consultant at Health Care Service Corporation in Chicago, as well as a local theater actor, singer, Grace Lutheran Church (Woodstock) and Toastmasters member, columnist and past president of TownSquare Players. He and his wife have lived in Woodstock for 24 years.

IF YOU GO

• WHAT: Musical comedy “Shucked”

• WHERE: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St., Chicago

• WHEN: Through Jan. 19

• INFORMATION: BroadwayInChicago.com