Shucked – 28 May 2023, 03 December 2023

Shucked weaves together a thoroughly enjoyable theatrical experience, juxtaposing immature puns with songs that actually have a lot to say. The score is incredibly complex, beautiful, and well thought out. The book is full of laughs, chuckles, and outright guffaws. On the surface, the production team of Shucked posits a question: if other types of media can contain pieces that are wickedly inappropriate to cater to an audience that needs a break and a laugh, why can’t theatre? Shucked is a beautiful experiment bringing back the idea that there’s no reason why going to the theatre can’t be, as once it was, a fun indulgence for the groundlings instead of a sophisticated activity that only appeals to an upper class demographic.

When sitting in the theatre, I found myself laughing in a way that is very familiar to me in every other form of media: television, movies, radio, literature, visual art, comics, even social media posts and memes. About a week after I saw Shucked, I found myself listening to the Original Broadway Cast Recording. Without the jokes catering to the lowest common denominator weaving the songs together, I was stunned to discover there was a whole other dimension to the show, a dimension that was somewhat striking.

Songs like “Walls”, “Woman of the World”, “Bad”, “Somebody Will” and, of course, Alex Newell’s historic Tony-winning performance of “Independently Owned” offered interesting, sophisticated, and, dare I say, profound insight into gender stereotypes and their origins in small towns where you have to “think even smaller”. The second act of Shucked posits the inherent contradictions in which rules people feel comfortable bending (i.e. “we love Jesus, but we drink a little”) and those which are ironclad—leaving a small town to discover that the rest of the world is manipulative and dangerous, so it’s best to go back and stick with the familiar small town mentality. When listening to the soundtrack after seeing the show, I found myself with a question: why are we laughing at this? Is this funny?

We came to the theatre. We laughed at a world as far away from New York city’s ideological melting pot as it is possible to be. We were open to seeing this world—but only within our big city stereotypes: that small towns are backwards and not to be taken seriously. Does this accurately reflect on small towns, or is it really about how the way that big cities see small towns is, in fact, as narrow and restrictive as the way that we think they see us?

I think the laugh is on us. The women in Shucked are strong, brave, and open-minded. The men are vulnerable, lonely, and, in many ways, lost. For a show that ends in a comedic, over the top, partner swap and double wedding, Shucked both played into stereotypes and defied them. In the superficial and subversive dimensions, I found the Gestalt of the Shucked experience to be a refreshing breath of fresh air.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.