Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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music, lyrics & book by Robert Lopez, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, directed by Casey Nicholaw & Trey Parker
Stuart Thompson et al., Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto
May 2-June 9, 2013
“Hey Trey, Hey Matt – ‘Man Up!’”
The Book of Mormon arrives in Toronto surrounded by hype and garlanded with nine 2011 Tony awards including Best Musical. The entire run is already sold out except for 24 tickets released every day in a lottery. Does the show live up to some of the extravagant praise it has received – “It’s the best musical of the last 25 years” (Vogue) or, even more hyperbolic, “It’s the best musical of this century” (New York Times). If we recall just some of the musicals since 2000 – Urinetown (2001), The Light in the Piazza (2003), Wicked (2003), Caroline, or Change (2003), Billy Elliot (2005), Spring Awakening (2006), Next to Normal (2008) or Matilda the Musical (2010) – the simple answer is “No”.
The harder question is: “Is it any good as a musical?” Many people will be drawn to the show because it is written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the animated series South Park, now in its sixteenth season on television. As someone who has happened never to have seen South Park or anything else by Parker and Stone, I come to the show with no notion of what their style is like. That shouldn’t matter because ultimately the musical has to be able to stand on its own rather than being judged by its creators’ past activities.
Viewed simply as a musical, The Book of Mormon is not very impressive. The problem is not the religious satire or the amount of crude humour and gross references so many critics mention. A person can see worse any day on television. The novelty is mostly seeing such things in a large-scale musical, even though Hair broke the rules on what could be said and done in a musical way back in 1967. Rather, the main problem that few have mentioned is that the show is boring. This comes from cardboard characters, easy targets for satire, unmemorable songs, the same jokes used too often, a padded second act and a conclusion that negates any pretence of satire that has gone before.
The story concerns the Mormon Church’s encouragement of young people aged between 18 and 25 to dedicate two years of their lives to proselytizing missionary work in foreign countries. Missionaries are sent in pairs primarily so that each can check that the other is holding up the standards of the Missionary Handbook. The plot pairs zealous, lean and egotistical Elder Price (Mark Evans) with reluctant, chubby and self-deprecating Elder Cunningham (Christopher John O’Neill), who has never even read the Book of Mormon. Park and Stone make out that all Mormon men must perform missionary work and omit the fact that potential missionaries have to meet standards of worthiness, such as knowledge of the scriptures, that Elder Cunningham would obviously fail. Would we believe that a Catholic missionary had not read the Bible? If not, why should be believe that Mormons would allow someone to proselytize who hadn’t read their scriptures?
While Price and Cunningham’s peers are sent to cushy posts in first world nations, the unlucky two are sent to Uganda. They soon find that Africa is not like it is in The Lion King. The two are robbed immediately upon arrival and find themselves in a village struggling with hunger, poverty and AIDS. One man goes off to have sex with babies because he’s been told it will cure AIDS. Both the village chief Mafala Hatimbi (Kevin Mambo) and his daughter Nabulungi (Samantha Marie Ware) also have AIDS. Even worse the village is terrorized by the warlord General Butt-Fucking-Naked (Derrick Williams), who wants all the women in the village circumcised. To make their lives bearable the villagers are given to grossly blaspheming God saying “Hasa diga eebowai”.
Indeed, if Parker and Stone really want to satirize religious belief, why don’t they go for evangelical Protestant or Catholic missionaries instead of picking on a religion with only fourteen millions adherents? Is it because it’s easier, and more commercially viable, to make fun of a smaller religion whose tenets few know about than a large, well-known one? The coarse language and the gross references make the show seem tough, but its avoidance of political implications and a choice of an easy target reveal an underlying cowardice.
The second questionable aspect of the show is its choice of AIDS, spurious AIDS “cures” and female circumcision as punchlines for jokes. The village doctor’s recurrent cry “I have maggots in my scrotum” is supposed to be funny. On the one hand, Parker and Stone are saying that nothing is off limits for comedy. On the other hand, is there some reason that comedy has to exclude compassion? The show portrays the misery in Africa as so endemic as to be insoluble. Inviting the audience to laugh at it only encourages it to dismiss the problem. If any portion of the millions the show rakes in went directly to charities helping those suffering in Africa, we could think that the producers and creators had some awareness that laughing at other people’s misery is not just edgy humour but a morally dubious position. But then this is commercial theatre. Why should it care about its portrayal of people in the real world? In fact, Parker and Stone particularly satirize Bono and his charity work in Africa
As it happens, Elder Price, who really wanted a posting in Orlando, Florida, can’t handle the trouble in Uganda and leaves Elder Cunningham to fend for himself. Cunningham find that the Book of Mormon is so boring that it puts people to sleep since it seems to be irrelevant to their lives. To get them engaged he starts weaving together elements of the Book of Mormon with plots from Star Wars, Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings to capture and sustain their interest and makes the combined tales directly address the villagers’ concerns. His approach is a huge success and he makes more converts to Mormonism than any other Mormon missionary in Africa.
There is a kerfuffle when the Mission President discovers what Cunningham has been preaching, but the musical ultimate concludes with the notion that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as it gives you hope and helps you get through life. So, despite having made relentless fun of the history of Mormons and their teaching, the musical self-destructs by concluding with a complete retraction of its initial stance as a religious satire. Trey and Parker thus want to have it both ways and after their deliberate efforts to shock for two and a half hours, want to leave the audience with an upbeat message. Thus The Book of Mormon is not a biting satire at all but a massive wimp-out.
It would help if at least the music were memorable but it is not. The best sections are those like the opening number “Hello” and the tap-dance number “Turn It Off” (about compartmentalizing one’s thoughts) that Robert Lopez (composer of Avenue Q), Parker and Stone have written in an imitation 1950s style. Otherwise, the songs are like generic 1980s Adult Contemporary pop with the occasional ‘80s-style power ballad thrown in, like Cunningham’s big song “Man Up” about taking responsibility.
Despite the content, the structure of the musical is very old fashioned, with another first-versus-third world musical, The King and I, as it most important influence. The whole musical, in fact, seems constructed to lead up to its own equivalent of “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” musical-within-a-musical sequence in Rodgers and Hammerstein. In The King and I, however, Rodgers and Hammerstein assume that the audience already knows the basic plot of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin that the Siamese people’s play is based on. In contrast, Parker and Stone have the problem that the majority of their audience will not know the history of Mormonism nor the contents of the Book of Mormon. Therefore, they use frequent scenes telling us the official version of Mormon history and scripture in the form of deliberately cheesy tableaux vivants with a voice-over narrating the events. They then have to rehash this information all over again in the version that Cunningham teaches to his would-be converts. By the time his converts present their musical play “Joseph Smith American Moses”, we’ve heard the same stories three times, making the climax of the show more tedious than funny.
The second structural problem is that with Cunningham’s teaching of his own stories and “Joseph Smith American Moses” as the only important scenes in Act 2, Parker and Stone have to pad out the act to make it the same length as Act 1. Elder Price’s over-extended “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” is completely unnecessary to the plot as is his credo “I Believe” that simply states in more detail what we already know. The duet “Baptize Me” between Cunningham and Nabulungi is also unnecessary and hits us over the head until we are numb with parallels between baptism and sex.
For all the show’s conceptual and structural flaws, there’s no doubting that the talented cast gives its all to the performance. There’s no way that the cast can turn the caricatures that Parker and Stone have written into real characters, but they at least play the parts with energy and commitment. Welsh actor Mark Evans, who is on stage for most of the show, has a strong voice that never fails and vitality that never fades. Christopher John O’Neill makes quite a sympathetic Elder Cunningham. Samantha Marie Ware has a lovely voice as Nabulungi and its a pity that the creators are afraid to give ha single song that expresses emotion without making fun of it at the same time. Grey Henson as Elder McKinley is especially funny as a Mormon who is proud of his success in suppressing his homosexual tendencies. I did expect some kind of pay-off with his character by the end, but, unsurprisingly, given the rest of the show, there was none.
There is no pressing reason to see The Book of Mormon unless you feel compelled to keep up with the musical that has generated so much hype. The work is irreparably flawed and is certainly the most cowardly satire I’ve ever seen. It plays right into the general public’s prejudices against Mormons and against Africa. It may have a transgressive aura but that aura is completely superficial. I have to say that by the finale I had more respect for the real Mormons handing out leaflets and copies of their scripture outside before the show that I did for the show’s creators.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Christopher John O’Neill as Elder Cunningham with Ugandan villagers; (middle) Mark Evans as Elder Price. ©2013 Joan Marcus.
For information about the ticket lottery, visit www.mirvish.com/shows/thebookofmormon.
2013-05-05
The Book of Mormon