How Broadway Got ‘Shucked’: The 12-Year Journey to a Riotous Production That Could Be the Musical-Comedy Sleeper of the Season

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The verdicts on the new Broadway musical-comedy “Shucked” are in, and the critics have asked you to lend them your ears — so to speak — as they’ve cobbled together their reactions to the possible sleeper hit. (Sorry, but once you’ve seen the production, it may take you six months or longer to stop speaking in puns.) Variety’s critic wrote that “with its exuberance, heart and non-stop yucks, ‘Shucked’ is the surprise delight of the Broadway season.” The New York Post’s notice trumpeted it as “Broadways’s best and funniest new musical.” Time Out said the show leaves theatergoers “gorged to satisfaction on a big, tasty bag of Broadway puff.” Entertainment Weekly wrote that “its refreshing embrace of diversity and unapologetically corny sincerity can definitely put a smile on your face.” Even one of the minority that was harder on it, the New York Times’ Jesse Green, begrudgingly admitted of the parade of laughs: “forced into submission,,” he wrote, “you eventually give in.” Without knowing how “Shucked” will ultimately fare at the Broadway b.o., these notices — along with the roaring full houses that have filled the Nederlander Theatre during previews — are providing a happy ending to a show that has often stood in danger of having its flame snuffed out through a dozen years of development.

Yes, 12 years… epic even by normal, painfully elongated Broadway standards. But beating longshot odds seems to have been standard practice so far for a show that has brought together two of New York theater’s finest Tony-winning talents, director Jack O’Brien (“Hairspray”) and book writer Robert Horn (“Tootsie”), with two of the best songwriters to come out of Nashville in the