INTERVIEW: Grey Henson dissects the corny humor of ‘Shucked’
Photo: Shucked features Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson as the storytellers. Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman / Provided by DKC O&M with permission.
Shucked, the acclaimed new musical at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway, has been packing in audiences for months, delivering a unique style of humor that is often not seen in Midtown Manhattan. This Our-Town-esque show is a close examination of the residents living in Cobb County, USA. They are farmers who have built their lives around the corn crop, but their community is facing many obstacles that threaten their way of life.
Two of the key roles in the musical are the storytelling narrators, portrayed by Ashley D. Kelley and Grey Henson. They are respectively known as Storyteller #1 and Storyteller #2, and their mission throughout the evening is to make the crowd laugh as they bring everyone through this hilarious, yet profound, narrative of small-town life.
Henson is a Broadway alum who has appeared in Mean Girls and The Book of Mormon. He loves telling these “dad jokes” night after night.
“Me and Ashley, the other storyteller, more than anyone, we get to play on stage because we directly talk to the audience,” Henson said in a recent phone interview. “And we get to play a version of ourselves and narrate this really sweet story that is so desperately funny and has a lot of heart, too. But, yeah, it is maybe the most fun I’ve had on stage, for sure.”
When Henson received the audition to join the company of Shucked, which features a book by Robert Horn and music by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, he couldn’t quite grasp the material. He needed to bring these unique lines of dialogue to life in front of an audience to truly appreciate the style of humor and its punny jokes.
“Initially when I got the audition, I didn’t quite understand the material or the show, and on paper, I didn’t really understand the power of Shucked,” he said. “And specifically my role’s name is Storyteller #2, and so I was like, ‘Am I playing Barista #3 in Gilmore Girls?’ I truly had no idea what the show or the role even would be, but the moment I went in to audition, the creative team was so responsive in a way that surprised me. And it wasn’t until I had people reacting to the way that I was saying the lines that I realized, ‘Oh, this is standup comedy.’ Our roles definitely need an audience to make them fly, I think, and the moment we had an audience for our first preview on Broadway, it all clicked for me.”
When Henson joined the show, his fellow company members had known the material already. They had been part of an out-of-town tryout in Utah, but he was jumping into the project for the Broadway run. This presented a few challenges, but because of the welcoming attitude of the cast and creative team, he fit right in.
“I still hadn’t any idea what it would be like to do it with a crowd of 1,200 people a night, but the moment we had a crowd, I was like, ‘Oh, this is how I do this role,'” he said. “We don’t really have scenes. We don’t get to talk to each other and build a story. We only talk to the audience, and so it wasn’t until we had that final character of the audience that I understood the role.”
In Shucked, there’s a joke every few seconds, and each bit of humor lands in a different way. During a recent performance, some jokes were immediately figured out, instigating long-lasting laughs from the sold-out crowd. Other times, the puns took a few seconds to understand, and then there was a wave of guffaws as each individual audience member got the joke.
“There’s a million jokes per minute,” Henson said. “That’s the nature of the show, and that’s why people have been coming back to see it multiple times, luckily, because they miss certain jokes. Once you get on board for the style of humor that is so beautifully written in the script by Robert Horn, you are prepared for it, and you wait for a joke. You know when you watch Friends now, there’s such a rhythm to how that show was written that they mastered it by the end. And you weren’t disappointed; you expected it. The structure of that humor was so clear. It’s the same in Shucked, and so when I get ready to open my mouth, the audience is prepared for me to say something dumb or stupid or funny.”
Henson admitted that this style of humor doesn’t come naturally to him. He doesn’t have a pun ready to go for every conversation. His hilarity lies more in the delivery and situational humor.
“Funny story: When I was on vocal rest once, I was with one of my best friends, and I was trying to type out all these things I was saying,” the actor said. “I was like, ‘If you could just hear my delivery of it, you’d be laughing.’ With Shucked, it is smart, intelligent, dad-joke humor. Sometimes we have an audience that doesn’t want to enjoy themselves with the puns, but they slowly have to get on board. Ashley and I can really feel out the audience from the beginning, and we can tell if it’s a crowd that thinks they are smarter than we are, and they are a little bit ahead of what they assume is dumb humor. But as you realize, no, this is how these people talk in Cobb County, you get on board with it, but it is a foreign type of humor to me in that I don’t have dad jokes ready. I don’t have puns ready to go. Robert Horn, who wrote the book, is a mastermind at it. He has a million ready to go at all times.”
Henson added: “It’s fun. It’s clever. It’s wordplay, and there’s a lot of history in the comedy of Shucked. We do a million different types of humor, and every character sort of plays around with their own unique specific voice. We have a vaudeville moment in there, a phone call where we jump from one character to the next with the hat and glasses. There’s a lot of beautifully historic nods at older types of comedy that you don’t often get to see, and so to have those back on Broadway, I think has been what a lot of people have responded to.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Shucked, featuring Grey Henson, continues on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre. Click here for more information and tickets.
