2-24-2025 4:04am

Broadway's "Cob County"

Hit musical headed for Baltimore, Washington

“The jokes are just flying at you a mile a minute,” said Danielle Wade about Shucked, a hit Broadway musical on its North American tour, which arrives in Washington next week and Baltimore in April. Wade, pictured at left, sets out on a journey to save her isolated farming community, Cobb County, after its corn crop begins to die. Erick Pinnick, right, plays the Grandpa. (Photo courtesy Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

NEW YORK — A small community surrounded by corn might not sound like the setting for a Broadway hit, but Shucked has been winning over audiences nationwide.

The musical, fresh off its Broadway run, is now on a national tour and will stop in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore in the coming weeks.

“It all sounds very silly and ridiculous, but, man, is it a really good time,” said Danielle Wade, who stars as Maizy, the show’s heroine.

Maizy is a resident of Cobb County, a small, isolated community surrounded by a corn wall. When its crop begins to die, she decides to venture beyond the wall, all the way to Tampa, Fla., where she recruits a so-called “corn doctor” — a podiatrist and con man — to save her farming community.

With 184 jokes packed into the show, “the jokes are just flying at you a mile a minute,” said Wade, a 32-year-old Broadway veteran, adding that audience members who laugh the hardest are often the ones least expecting to.

Reviews for the play have been positive. The New York Times highlighted the show’s fusillade of comedy when it debuted in 2023.

“For more than two hours, it pelts you with piffle so egregious — not just puns but also dad jokes, double entendres and booby-trapped one-liners — that, forced into submission, you eventually give in,” wrote theater critic Jesse Green.

Wade, who grew up in a small Ontario farming town, says rural audiences tend to connect with the show.

“They get it a lot more than the New Yorkers do,” she said.

The show has been touring the country for four months.

“It’s one of those shows where, as soon as you see it, you tell four people to go see it,” Wade added. “It’s incredibly heartwarming for a show about corn.”

For those who don’t consider themselves musical theater fans, Wade said Shucked might just change their minds.

“It really is a show for people who don’t really love musicals,” she said.

Local audiences can catch Shucked when it plays at the National Theater in Washington from Feb. 25 to March 2 and the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore from April 1-6.

WHAT THE SHUCK IS SHUCKED?

Shane McAnally & Brandy ClarkShane McAnally, Robert Horn & Brandy ClarkNext

An unlikely hero,
an unscrupulous con man,
and a battle for the heart & soil of a small town.

SHUCKED is the Tony Award®-winning musical comedy The Wall Street Journal calls “flat out hilarious!” Featuring a book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn (Tootsie), a score by the Grammy® Award-winning songwriting team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, and directed by Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien (Hairspray), this corn-fed, corn-bred American musical is sure to satisfy your appetite for great musical theater.