– By Cate Marquis –
The hit musical comedy THE BOOK OF MORMON makes a return to the Fox Theater, May May 29-June 3. Written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the guys behind “South Park,” and Robert Lopez, it is one of the funniest Broadway musicals in recent years but not the typical musical. If you have seen “South Park,” you know what to expect. It is rude and crude, poking teasing fun at some quirks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Third creator, Robert Lopez, is now best known for writing the hit songs (along with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez) of the movie FROZEN, but before that Lopez co-wrote the musical AVENUE Q, a raunchy comedy send-up of something resembling Sesame Street with Muppet-like characters.
Most, if not all, religions have aspects that don’t entirely make sense. Parker and Stone know their subject well from having grown up around Mormons, or Latter Day Saints (LDS) as they are more correctly called. To their credit, the Mormons took the ribbing better than some religions might, taking out an ad in the program for the Broadway debut, which read something like “you saw the play, now read the book.”
The story centers on two young Mormon men about to be given their two-year missionary assignment, a step that marks their transition to adulthood along with their new titles as “elder.” Elder Kevin Price (Kevin Clay) is the “golden child” of the group of trainees, a handsome, charismatic guy and a model of perfection who has succeeded at everything he’s tried. Expectations are high among the church leaders for him as the next generation of leadership. Elder Cunningham (Conner Peirson) is, well, different, a friendless chubby character who doesn’t seem to get it and has a very un-Mormon-like tendency to, well, tell lies and make things up.
Their mission will be to bring in new converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints but to the newly-minted elders, it seems more like a graduation trip to an exciting location. As each young man is paired up with a partner and given an assignment to Paris or Norway or Japan, Elder Price prays fervently to be sent to the city of his dreams – Orlando, Florida. Instead, he is assigned to partner with Elder Cunningham on a mission to Uganda.
Uganda is about as far from Orlando as they could get. Worse, Elders Price and Cunningham land in Uganda in the African nation’s darkest time period, when it is in chaos and poverty, under the sway of ruthless warlords, riddled with AIDS, beset by dysentery and other diseases. They are assigned to a rundown little village that is being threatened by a warlord General (Corey Jones) whose nom de guerre is too rude to print, a violent man who is fixed on imposing “female circumcision” on all the young women living in the area. Mafala (Jacques C. Smith) is hiding his pretty, outgoing daughter Nabulungi (Kayla Pecchioni) from the General and his men, fearing to even let her go to the market alone. Elder Cunningham is smitten with her, even if he can’t seem to get her name right.
Elders Price and Cunningham are to share a house with other Mormon missionaries, who have not had much success so far. The villagers have seen missionaries before. They are not impressed.
As Elder Cunningham, Conner Peirson does much of the comic heavy lifting, in a series of comic numbers that require the surprisingly agile Peirson to dance and sing. Kevin Clay is perfect as Price, both singing and acting well the role of the idealist who has always succeeded easily at everything but now faces the first real challenges of his young life. Kayla Pecchioni is sweet and charming as starry-eyed Nabulungi, who sees Cunningham and Price as symbols of an outside world that is better and even magical. Another cast stand-out is Corey Jones as the General, with the right mix of menace and disbelief, as well as a fine singing voice.
A lot of the comedy comes from dramatizations of the history and beliefs of the Mormon faith that are played out as the missionaries describe what is in the Book of Mormon to their potential converts. Ron Bohmer beams appropriately as LDS founder Joseph Smith, while Tyler Leahy plays the prophet Mormon and Andy Huntington Jones portrays the angel Moroni. One of the most biting musical numbers, “Turn It Off,” comes after the Price and Cunningham first meet their fellow missionaries in the village, mocking the Mormon trick of suppressing unpleasant feelings. The 2011 musical was always a bit topical, so the dialog seems to have been updated a bit from the original. One of the show’s comic highlights is when the villagers enact their version of the Book of Mormon, or at least the version Elder Cunningham told them.
A lot of the comic lyrics are crude, even shocking, but the cast carries it off with bravura. BOOK OF MORMON is an unconventional musical comedy delight.
© Cate Marquis
