'Book of Mormon' at the Forrest (second review)

Anyone who goes to see Book of Mormon without knowing what they’re in for hasn’t been paying attention. And those who do know, go anyway because it has been labeled A Hit. In other words, other people like it.

The story tells of two young Mormon missionaries, Elder Kevin Price (KJ Hippensteel) and Elder Arnold Cunningham (Christopher John O’Neill), who are sent to Uganda to convert the natives. The natives, who fit every stereotype of darkest Africa including ignorance and AIDS, are threatened by a warlike warlord, General BF Naked (Corey Jones) who is terrified of the clitoris. The assignment tests the boys’ commitment to their faith and to each other as they muddle along toward maturity and a happy ending.

It’s bad boys getting together and saying "Let’s put everything offensive we can think of into a musical, and we’ll have a Broadway smash." (Sound familiar? Only Mel Brooks’s characters in The Producers were looking to create a flop.) These guys, the creators of the TV show South Park and the musical Avenue Q, already knew they could succeed by offending. Granted it takes a lot more to offend us nowadays, but we still have our flash points — or do we? But how bad can it be to have a musical that uses the word clitoris more than I’ve ever heard it used before?

Professionally produced potty humor

Book of Mormon has a lot going for it. Bathroom humor (a recurring character who makes sure we know where he’s got maggots), professionally done by talented singers and dancers. Catchy songs, although none of them has made it into popular culture. It's one of the few shows lately where I could hear and understand every word spoken or sung. All those words.

This is, as I said, a very boys-all-together kind of show. The one female character, Nabulungi, played by Alexandra Ncube, has a name none of the characters can pronounce. So she is called a variety of similar sounding names. I get the joke, but the concept of the nameless woman still resonates. She is the anchor, the one character who brings sweetness into the story, and yet she is betrayed and ultimately unknown.

As for jokes about babies curing AIDS and women’s genital mutilation — I wasn’t really laughing. What happens when we make jokes about the real tragedies of life? We don’t solve them, but do we become inured to them? Jon Stewart confronts this nightly, and sometimes it works and sometimes it crosses a line that makes all of us uncomfortable.

After I left the theater, after the laughter and high energy had dissipated, I started to wonder what the show was really all about. I learned a bit about the history of Mormonism, which like all religions has elements of the absurd, but I’m not sure what Mormons believe, what these young men were going door to door preaching.

That they turned brutality into faith, even if it had little to do with the religious tenets they were attempting to preach, can be seen as a good thing, But is believing in myths, ours or someone else’s, the way to a more peaceful world? If it is, if all it takes is a young man with a vivid imagination who sees frogs (one of the original ten plagues) as a way to salvation, maybe we should consider sending him to the Middle East where he might turn warfare into wisdom.

For a review by Steve Cohen, click here.

For a review by Carol Rocamora, click here.

For a review by Tara Lynn Johnson, click here.

To read Dan Rottenberg’s review of the Broadway production, click here.