03 Jun The Book of Mormon review – don’t believe the hype!!
The Book of Mormon (the Broadway musical not the religious text) has come back to the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, and I was wondering if might be a nice show to see with my parents while they were in town. A friend had sent me a link to reduced price tickets, so I researched the Book of Mormon reviews and found pretty consistent excellent reviews for this musical comedy in Melbourne.
Because The Book of Mormon is supposed to poke fun at religious evangelists, and due to the fact that it was written by the creators of Southpark (Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez), my atheist parents were keen to see it. I showed them one of the glowing reviews and we shelled out about $270 for three tickets to a Tuesday night performance.
The plot
The musical follows two Latter-day Saints missionaries, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham, as they are sent to Uganda to preach the word of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The indigenous population were notoriously hard to ‘convert’ and some creative approaches were devised to try to bring them into the fray. All the while, the community is in danger of persecution by a local rebel leader.
The Book of Mormon review
My mother said that she was ‘expecting it to be cheesy’ as it was a musical, however, I felt a little uncomfortable with the way that the musical parts of the storytelling were quite so prevalent. It felt a bit ‘cringe’ to me. The music was excellent though, I thought and the dancing and choreography was particularly spectacular. Perhaps because my love of music is so core to my values it feels a bit facetious to use music to convey dialogue or theatre somehow. Or at least that is what I perceived while watching The Book of Mormon.
Basing the story in a Ugandan village for the most part brought a lot of colour and texture to the stage. The actors all had incredible voices and were very talented.
A comedy? Some parts were funny. . . But the thing that we most took issue with was the blatant racism and patronising treatment of Ugandan peoples in the story. One of the lines that was delivered early on in the play was particularly confronting. We wondered if the writers were insinuating that Ugandan people engage in such behaviours. It was beyond shocking.
The production contains a lot of profanity, sexual innuendo, crude jokes, and offensive language. It is definitely not suitable for children.
History of the script
My friend later told me that it is actually fact that Ugandan people believe that if they have HIV that having sex with a virgin will cure them. And to be fair, about half the cast were obviously African in descent, so this indicates the people themselves did not find the storyline overly racist or patronising.
Nonetheless the same friend had seen the play twice and told me that many of the more racist jokes had been removed from the script, perhaps due to a backlash from members of the African community.
Although the premise of the play was to poke satire at religious evangelists, I couldn’t help thinking that the Mormons were revered in the telling of this story.
An experience
Despite this criticism I am actually quite glad that I went to see it. I found it challenging because going was my idea and I was worried that my parents weren’t enjoying it, but it was still a pretty interesting play – the second half was particularly engaging.
I would have been disappointed if I had paid $150+ for the privilege though!
The hype
The Book of Mormon won won nine Tony Awards and four Olivier Awards. It has received a lot of critical acclaim. I think that if you have a penchant for musical theatre then you might enjoy The Book of Mormon, but be prepared to be challenged by the content. If you, like me don’t have a deep reverence for musical theatre then you might not like this production as much.
The Book of Mormon would be great for fans of South Park, Avenue Q, or edgy comedy. As mentioned earlier, it is not suitable for children or those easily offended by religious humour. The show is a must-see for anyone seeking to get over religious trauma or just looking for a good laugh, but it won’t be for everyone.
People who love musicals and who are not easily offended would love this musical play the most, I think.
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