Aw, shucks. This is the gosh-darndest musical I’ve ever laid eyes and ears on.
We are somewhere in an isolated rural community in the Midwestern US of A whose economy is entirely dependent on one kind of crop – corn. What isn’t used for food is distilled into the even more profitable corn whiskey. When the crop fails just as young couple Beau (Ben Joyce) and Maizy (Sophie McShera) are about to get hitched, they are forced to seek help from the wicked world outside.
Writer Robert Horn’s plot is merely the husk of a story in which Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally’s songs are stuffed like comedy succotash.On a set of a huge skeletal barn, book ended by corn stalks, the vivacious cast sing, dance and camp it up with unfettered glee.
The themes of change, isolation, community and love are swept aside by the torrential jokes. The first phallic joke raises its head within five minutes and there are plenty more to follow.
Narrated by the dynamic duo of Monique Ashe-Palmer and Steven Webb, it is knowing, arch and very naughty and throws out more puns and one-liners than Tim Vine. The supposedly slow-witted Peanut (Keith Ramsay) is the principle conduit for Horn’s jokes and comes across like Hillbilly stand up Emo Philips after a gallon or two of corn liquor.
Plundering various musical forms, Clark & McAnally collide high-stepping hoe downs with heartrending ballads that keep everyone on their toes. Directed con brio by Jack O’Brien, it flings out references to musicals such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Oklahoma! as if infected with the deranged slapstick of Airplane!
I was as high as an elephant’s eye by the end.
SHUCKED THE MUSICAL: REGENT’S PARK OPEN AIR THEATRE TO JUNE 14