When Georgia-bred actor Jackson Goad tells the story of how he got his Broadway break by being cast in the touring production of Tony Award-winning musical comedy “Shucked,” he describes a serendipitous comedy of errors amounting to something like fate.
“Shucked” — part of the Regions Bank Broadway in Atlanta series at the Fox Theatre May 20-25 — is a comedy about a girl named Maizy from Cob County (puns intended) who sets out to save her town’s dying corn crop. Before Goad auditioned for the musical, he had nearly given up on acting. He had sent out 400 online audition tapes and attended many more in-person auditions in New York where he was majoring in acting at Ithaca College. He had only received a single callback.
Then he read Robert Horn’s script for “Shucked.” As a true Southerner whose father and grandfather shared Horn’s witty style of comedic country storytelling loaded with punchlines and puns, the play felt as if it was in his blood.
“My grandfather raised my father on ‘Hee Haw,’ the country comedy musical. And my father raised myself and my brother on ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ and this very old-school, Southern country comedy way of life,” Goad said. “And that is what ‘Shucked’ is based on … I loved the script from the moment I read it.”
Goad was a relative amateur compared to other actors at the first audition. So when he received a phone call from his agent telling him to stay in New York for the second day of auditions, he hadn’t even packed a change of clothes. He was wearing Ariat cowboy boots, Levi’s and a red tank top already stained with deodorant.
“I have no dancing clothes for the audition,” he flustered to his agent. “She went, ‘Jackson, it’s a country comedy about corn. You’ll be fine.’
“I show up the next morning and sure enough, everyone else is in Lululemon and athletic wear, and I look like I have crawled out of the script.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
Credit: Matthew Murphy
Goad was cast both in North American Tour ensemble casts and as an understudy for the roles of Beau (Maizy’s ex-fiancé) and Gordy (a fast-talking podiatrist recruited to help revive the corn crop). Goad has now been in more than 200 performances of “Shucked” including 10 times on stage as Beau, and four as Gordy. He still travels with his lucky Ariat boots.
Goad loves the style of humor in “Shucked,” which was praised by the New York Stage Review as “More hilarious than any show since ‘The Book of Mormon.’”
“Robert Horn nailed it,” Goad said. “There are 178 laughs in this show. I think Jack O’Brien (the director) counted them all at one rehearsal: 178 punchlines. And sometimes we get more if the audience just thinks something is funny.”
The paradox though, Goad said, is that the characters don’t know it’s funny.
“I think that’s the best part of the comedy is when the people on stage don’t treat it like a comedy,” Goad said. “A corn musical; Good Lord, we take it seriously.”
Goad’s father, who is the current mayor of North High Shoals, a town about 60 miles from Atlanta, will be at the Fox Theatre next week to watch the show. Goad won’t know if he’ll play his usual role in the ensemble or if he might get tagged last-minute in one of his understudy roles. Either way, he’s excited to have his family in the audience.
It was “a beautiful moment,” he said, when his dad — a blue-collar worker turned academic and politician who supported, but didn’t quite understand, his son’s draw to acting — learned that Goad’s first big job would be in a play inspired by “Hee Haw.” They both felt the presence of Grandpa Wayne.
“This was always going to be where I got to,” Goad said. “This was always going to be a terminus of some kind.”
Credit: Matthew Murphy
Credit: Matthew Murphy
If you go
May 20-25. $50-$182. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-881-2100. foxtheatre.org.
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