National Tour of Shucked at the Buell Features Homegrown Talent

When Ryan Fitzgerald steps onto the Buell Theatre stage this month, it will be more than just another stop on the first national tour of Shucked. For the Colorado artist, the engagement is a return to the community and theaters that first shaped his love of performance.

“It’s an incredible homecoming and a huge honor to be able to return to the regional touring house where I grew up seeing shows,” Fitzgerald says during a Zoom call from the musical’s tour stop in San Francisco. “I saw Phantom of the Opera, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Sweet Charity, Grease and so many other shows touring as a kid and was always wanting to do that. Now I actually get to count myself among those artists who have traveled the country and inevitably made it back to the Mile High City, so it is a true gift to be back with Shucked.” 

Fitzgerald is in the ensemble of the musical comedy about an unlikely hero, a lovable con man, and a high-stakes fight for the future of a town where corn is king. With a book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn and a score by Grammy-winning country music hitmakers Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, the show leans into pun-filled humor while delivering a story about resilience.

“Shucked is a show about corn, but it’s also not about corn,” Fitzgerald says. “It’s about community and love. It is the story of a woman whose livelihood in the fictional county of Cobb County, corn, begins to die, so she leaves to figure out how to solve this. She brings back someone who is not who he says he is, and then hijinks ensue.”

Growing up in Longmont, Fitzgerald first discovered his love of theater at the Jesters Dinner Theatre and Boulder Dinner Theatre, where he cut his teeth on everything from The Wizard of Oz to Fiddler on the Roof. Later, at Denver School of the Arts, he found a community that fueled his ambition. 

“All the people within DSA shaped me so much, all those opportunities,” he recalls. “It was so pressurized, and everyone was there for the same reasons: because we cared and were impassioned by this art form. Being around peers that had the same drive and ambition obviously helps.” 

After college at the University of Oklahoma and stints at regional theaters across the country, Fitzgerald moved to New York, and two months later, he booked the international tour of West Side Story. “So then I was touring Europe, and then came back to the States, and then the rest is sort of history,” Fitzgerald says. “I just worked regionally until Shucked came along.”

One of those regional productions was Hercules at the Paper Mill Playhouse, on which Shucked‘s writer, Robert Horn, was also working. During work on Hercules, he received a text from Horn inviting him and the other cast members to see the Broadway production of Shucked.

“We all went and saw it, and I was completely blown away,” he says. “I laughed, I cried and I said to myself, ‘I have to be in this, I will be in this, I’m going to be in this.’” 

When auditions for the tour were announced, Fitzgerald messaged Horn and expressed his strong interest in being a part of the show. Fitzgerald also asked to look over the audition material with Horn to make sure he was on the right track.

“You gotta use your resources,” he says. “That’s one thing I’m always telling people, because the worst thing that someone can say is. ‘No,’ and then it’s done, and you move on. Robert Horn was kind and generously took time to make sure that the choices I was making were good and sort of guided me in the right way. It was nice to sort of be affirmed in that way, but then also, there were things that I was missing that he picked up on. Then audition, audition, audition, final callback, final callback and the rest is history. Booked it.” 

In the show, Fitzgerald plays two roles: Rowdy, a Cobb County local, and a Floridian he jokingly calls “Dwayne.” Asked for his favorite corn joke, Fitzgerald doesn’t hesitate. He points to a lyric from the Act I number “Corn” that always gets a roar: “Sweet corn, street corn, it’s really hard to beat corn … Candy corn, kettle corn, put it in your mouth, it’s the same goin’ in comin’ out.” 

“I love that joke,” he says with a laugh. “It makes me laugh, and it makes everyone else laugh, because they’re always like, ‘It’s true.’”

That mix of silliness and sincerity is what excites Fitzgerald about returning to Denver with the tour. Just last year, he came home to perform at the Arvada Center in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and Cinderella, experiences that reminded him how much the support of his home state means to him. 

“Not to be corny, but it was so beautiful, and I can’t thank my lucky stars enough that I got to have those experiences at the Arvada Center, and now I get to go, almost just a year out, come to the Buell and do it again,” Fitzgerald says. “I’m checking off spaces. I was in Norma, the opera, at Ellie Caulkins Opera House, so I’m checking them off the bucket list.”

Shucked runs Tuesday, October 7, through Sunday, October 19, at the Buell Theatre, 1350 Curtis Street. Learn more at denvercenter.org.