Book of Mormon

In our first Broadway show since the COVID outbreak, Lauren, my friend Mike, our neighbor, and I all went to a Sunday evening show. All but our neighbor had seen the show once before (Lauren and I wayyy back in Summer, 2013) so, for me, it was a welcome revisit of a show that I had enjoyed.

Seeing it a second time occasioned some different responses. The first time I saw “Mormon,” it was a lot like the first time I saw any “South Park” / Matt Parker & Trey Stone creation e.g. the Spirit of Christmas video: you just giggle and laugh because the characters said such horribly filthy things.¹

Warning: Videos are NSFW

Spirit of Christmas video

Or, consider from the “South Park” movie, “Uncle-Fucker:”

"Uncle-Fucker" in all its glory

But even as you watch this coprolalic filth stream out, you can’t help concede that what you’re seeing is good and cheeky and satirical. Spirit of Christmas mocks the Rankin & Bass Christmas shows (e.g. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”) aesthetic and their capitalist-treacle message that everything is all-right as long as the presents get there. “Uncle-Fucker” plays with all the dumb, obvious tropes of trite musical theatre (“Uncle-Fucker, fuck YOU-n-c-l-e…”). Like Miles Davis on the trumpet, Parker/Stone know the form, know what’s good, and they’ve mastered it such that when they pour filth and snark all over it, it’s shocking…and good.

That’s the glory of Book of Mormon: it is a great musical (song, dance, themes, writing) while also being a great Parker/Stone collaboration — extended by Robert Lopez as a collaborator. Those who can’t see through the smoke screen of naughtiness miss the insightful, incisive satire on topics from religion, Red Cross do-gooder-ism, the Disney empire, and the UN.

“Joseph Smith, don’t fuck the baby. Fuck this frog”.

Plot

The plot is fairly straight-forward. Elders Price (the storybook Mormon: handsome, nice, and hoping to serve his mission in the happiest place he’d ever been: Orlando, FL) and Cunningham (a spaz, prone to making things up, and hoping for his devout parents’ approval for once) are odd-couple paired together on mission to Uganda where the Mormons have thus far failed to convert anyone.

In Uganda, a warlord runs amok while poor, AIDS-riddled villagers await death (“Hasa Diga Eebowai”), expecting it sooner versus later. Principal characters suffer with horrible maladies, but Nabalungi dreams of a better life. One where the warlords are friendly and a city so nice that Red Cross tents are on every corner. Needless to say, it will be more important for the Mormons to provide these desperate villagers the message of an American prophet (“All-American Proophet”) and his church than with things like security, medicine, or clean water. The needs misalignment creates much of the tension of the story.

Unsurprised that the story of Mormonism fails to capture the villagers in such an environment (whodathunkit), in a moment of desperation and non-supervision, Elder Cunningham starts…adorning the basic Mormon tale and starts winning souls. In fact, he starts winning too many souls and instilling hope (“Sal Tlay Ka Siti”). His group’s shocking success earns a visit from the high command and, in a riotous performance, the recently-converted display their mastery of the Mormon story as they understood it.

The story ends with Elders excommunicated from Mormonism…but being the first faithful converted of “The Book of Arnold (Cunningham).”

Themes

Religion

It should be first noted that Parker/Stone don’t dislike Mormons. In fact, reflecting on his childhood in suburban Littleton, Colorado, Parker always speaks highly of the Mormons in his life. He regards their presence in his community as generally having been upright and decent. Hilariously, it is only the Mormons that get into heaven in their “South Park (1999)” movie.

To this extent, the pair don’t make fun of Mormonism (despite goofball things like golden plates), but rather they make fun of all religions and their adherents':

• ability to tolerate contradiction (was he killed on this day or that day, the Holy book gives two dates)
• ability to tolerate incompleteness (where did the wives for the children of the primordial couple come from? Wouldn’t that be like…incest?)
• etc.

For any religious person coming in expecting the show to be a piñata party on Mormonism, they’re going to be uncomfortably confronted with the fact that Parker/Lopez/Stone point the cruel razor of logic on all religions for comedic value. Nevertheless, the Mormon story is described in full and if that story makes sense to you then you may have regarded the final season of “Game of Thrones” as well-constructed.²

Performers

The cast were excellent and so happy to be back on stage. I can generalize to say that the entire production team were clearly glad to be back performing. I saw that some of the crew had a hilarious T-shirt printed: “Hasa Diga COVID.” ³ Particularly notable performances were:

Kevin Clay as ELDER PRICE

As the straight-man and lovably flawed paragon of straight-lacedness (“I Believe”), Clay carried his role beautifully. In some interpretations, Elder Price’s desire to take over the mission and squash his buddy (“You And Me (But Mostly Me)”), Cunningham, can feel nasty. Clay makes it clear that the ambition comes from a good place, but is exclusionary, blind, and tone-deaf (“I Am Africa”), but not cruel. I thought this was some great nuance.

Brian Sears as ELDER CUNNINGHAM

This performance was so different than the last one I saw. Typically, Cunningham is played as someone who wants to be like Price, but falls short. He’s trying to be Price, but can’t get there. It’s a dynamic closer to Othello/Iago (well, at least as close as Mormons can get). In this performance, Sears’ interpretation is Cunningham as a — and I say this with the full weight of my 80’s childhood and 90’s teendom expertise — a spaz. Like a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, neglect issues, and way too much access to Jolt cola, Sears’s Cunningham is that guy who you just know never gets his shirt to tuck in evenly. He will fail not because of lack of passion or belief, but because he forgot to tie his shoes. I initially found it a bit grating, but with some of the more subtle, softer character notes communicated, I really came around to Sears’s interpretation. Hats off.

Stephen Ashfield as ELDER McKINLEY

This was the breakout performance in my opinion. McKinley is a Mormon on his mission still very much wrestling with the deep dark secrets that all proselytizers bury (“Turn It Off”). McKinley’s is, campily enough, that he is hella gay. While this role could devolve into Paul Lynde-grade camp, Ashfield plays it straight (ha!) and only lets more flamboyance leak out when it absolutely serves the story and creates bursts of humor. That he appears in another character’s Mormon hell dream (“Spooky Mormon Hell Dream”) living his fabulous truth is hilarious while poignant: he’s looking forward to the day when he can be in hell and, at the very least, not be in the closet anymore (Thanks, Religion!)

Kim Exum as NABULUNGI

Nabulungi is a tough character to get right. She’s meant to be a parody of the benighted African who needs a mission, but she’s also a human who really needs some other humans to look at her condition and just fucking help. It’s hard to be a proxy for the legacy of “White Man’s Burden” without implicitly supporting such dated conceptions, but also not fighting it too hard because it is, after all, a satire. It’s a really tough role, but Kim Exum’s interpretation puts innocence and decency first in Nabulungi and I think it makes all the difference. She’s starry-eyed, not because she’s sold on the orthodoxy, but because she believes that someone’s got to bring some good to her world — because it can’t get much worse, only literal Hell could be that.

Exum’s voice is clear, tender, and vulnerable. Her song of deep disappointment had a lot of tears running in the audience.

Conclusion

I’ve been surprised by the show’s longevity, but in a medium where the shows tend to be about spectacle (“Aladdin”) or tradition (“Phantom of the Opera”), “Mormon” is the show that delivers satire with belly-laughs and a side of ethics. It’s a remarkable show.

Footnotes

1. Sent from student to student on the campus network via email in an attached file called SOXMAS.zip
2. And that is called “sarcasm,” folks.
3. Translation: Fuck You, COVID