‘Shucked’ is the funniest new musical to come to the Bay Area in ages

What’s the funniest musical that you can think of?

“Spamalot”? “Hairspray”? “Mean Girls”? All worthy contenders, for sure.

Yet, I laughed harder — and certainly more often — during opening night of “Shucked” at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco than I did while watching any of those other entirely worthy productions.

There are 498,735 jokes (give or take) in this 2022 musical, which received nine nominations — including for Best Musical — at the 76th Tony Awards.

And roughly 498,736 of jokes work (do the math and you’ll see what I did there) in “Shucked,” which is making its West Coast debut at the Curran.

The storyline, of course, is very corny — pun very much intended — set in a rural small-town area known as Cobb County, which is in dire straights due to its highly valued corn cr