Mr. Man and I recently had the opportunity to see The Book of Mormon, the musical, with our dear neighbor friends. They are big musical aficionados and enjoy sharing their love of musicals with us.
Mr. Man and I have enjoyed South Park for years and years and were looking forward to Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s irreverent take on Mormonism. Something that I didn’t expect was how sweet the musical was. Don’t get me wrong, it was CRUDE and it was corny; it was everything you would expect the South Park guys to do to a musical.
After I had a chance to think about it, what I realized is that although the show makes fun of Mormonism (as in it SKEWERS everything about the doctrine), it doesn’t make fun of Mormons. One line that comes up at different points in the show is the Mormons saying that they just want to be nice to everybody.
I was speaking to a friend of mine who had also seen the show at one point, and I was not surprised by her reaction. She HATED it. I knew why. There is a whole, big, show-stopping song-and-dance number in the first act in which practically every other word is an f-bomb. I mean, my first reaction was to clutch my pearls. Then I remembered that I had left my pearls at home and just sat back and enjoyed the ride.
There is a lot of graphic language throughout the whole show, things that belong to the category of “polite people don’t say those things.” But this show was created by the South Park guys and they have made their career on throwing those things in your face. Why would you expect any different?
The things that I loved about the show were:
The campy choreography: particularly, the big, corny, old-fashioned tap number in the first act. So many jazz hands! So many shuffle-ball-change!
The twist: when the anti-hero is forced to act heroically and the way he goes about it.
SPOILERS (maybe): the part when the villagers tell the disillusioned heroine that, “it’s a METAPHOR!” This especially tickled me because I had been working on my post about how I think of the Tour de France as a metaphor for the human condition. Also, because in general, I am terrible for recognizing symbolism so I could sympathize with the character.
I have to say that no matter how mercilessly the show trolled the Mormon Church, the Church did a great job at winning. The inside, front cover of the program had a full-color ad that read, “you’ve seen the play…now read the book,” along with four different contact options. As a communication strategist, I couldn’t imagine a better way to turn negative publicity around.
