The Book of Mormon
Prince of Wales, London W1
To say word of mouth, or word of Twitter, ensured The Book of Mormon’s critic-proof transition from Broadway to London does not acknowledge Britain’s willingness to be seduced. The day the first, mixed, reviews came out, £2m-worth more tickets were sold to theatregoers who have never once been bothered by a Mormon on their doorstep. London remains in awe of US pop culture, and when we find an example that is anti- God, politically incorrect and wildly popular among Americans, hope floods into hearts unmoved by Obama’s re-election. It’s like 9/11 all over again: we are all Americans now.
As my attempted joke demonstrates, bad taste is easy, being funny hard and I am simply not sure how funny this musical, although effectively, if frugally, staged, boisterously acted and slickly choreographed, actually is. It is certainly bad taste.
A parody of The Lion King’s “Hakuna Matata” makes comedy out of Aids and female genital mutilation. Its catchy title/ chorus “Hasa Diga Eebowai” turns out to translate as “Fuck You God (Up the Bum)”, which is where the Book of Mormon ends up lodged in a preacher. One of the best numbers, “Switch it Off”, a song about blacking out inconvenient feelings, includes as an example a sister dying of cancer.
For a colonist nation, the racist, dareto- be-offended jokes against Africa require a particularly stiff upper lip. The Uganda to which our two missionary heroes, Elder Price (Gavin Creel), a clean-cut true-believer, and Elder Cunningham (the excellent Jared Gertner), a curly-haired nerd there to find a buddy, are sent is peopled by gullible idiots in thrall to a homicidal warlord, General Butt Fucking Naked.
The African love interest (Alexia Khadime) is described as being “such a hot shade of black she is like a latte” and her conversion to Mormonism is explicitly compared to a sexual conquest. At the end, the black Africans who have bought Cunningham’s improvised brand of sci-fi Mormonism – just as Utah did, we infer, Joseph Smith’s original version – tell the elders that they knew all along religion was but a useful metaphor. The effect is condescending.
It is clear at this point that someone has lost their nerve. The musical’s get-out-of-jail card, its raucous blasphemy, has been traded in for a feel-good moment. But the sentimentality might even be welcome if hilarity had built through the evening. But the songs, faint parodies of not particularly memorable show tunes (“Tomorrow” from Annie is becomes “Tomorrow is a Latter Day”), go on too long. The dancing fails to get past the insight that musicals are a bit gay and the big set pieces, such as Elder Price’s malarial decent into hell, underwhelm.
I should have been on the floor laughing or about to walk out; instead throughout I smiled indulgently, an atheist trying not to feel guilty at watching a soft target, so placid it has taken ads in the programme, being bullied. Life of Brian, Jerry Springer, the Opera and that off-colour masterpiece The Producers, in contrast, induced something ecstatic and freeing. At curtain call the writers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, whose creations South Park and Team America I admire, took a modest bow. They looked a little shamefaced, as if a pleasing bog-wall graffito had somehow ended up in the Tate.
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