“THE BOOK OF MORMON,” through Aug. 25, Eccles Theater, 131 S. Main St. (801-355-2787 or artsaltlake.org); running time: two hours and 20 minutes (one intermission)
SALT LAKE CITY — What happens when a believer and a non-believer walk into “The Book of Mormon” musical? We decided to find out. Two Deseret News employees, staff writer Herb Scribner — not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and Arts and Entertainment editor Cristy Meiners — a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — attended the controversial hit musical “The Book of Mormon” together the night after it opened in Salt Lake’s Eccles Theater. Read their takes below.
Cristy Meiners: In “Seinfeld’s” famous “Yada Yada” episode, Jerry’s dentist, played by Bryan Cranston, converts to Judaism, giving him the right to make both dentist and Jewish jokes. I thought about that episode a lot while watching “The Book of Mormon.” Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the musical’s award-winning writing duo, made no such conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and yet they gave themselves permission to jab and stab at a culture and belief system that isn’t their own, sometimes with eerie accuracy and sometimes missing the mark completely.
For me, “The Book of Mormon” was at its strongest in its first 20 minutes. The opening scene is a very silly, very quick run-through of Joseph Smith and the unearthing of the record that would become the actual Book of Mormon. As someone who has seen the Hill Cumorah Pageant more than a few times, I got a definite pageant vibe (staged arm movements, glossy wigs and voice-over narration), and anyone who has served a mission will likely find themselves smiling along to the giddy cheerfulness of a group of missionaries practicing door approaches in the first number, “Hello!” The ensemble of Latter-day Saint missionaries, recognizable in their white shirts, dark pants and name tags, looked so familiar that I wondered if casting had recruited them from the Missionary Training Center before the curtain went up.
Herb Scribner: All the references to Salt Lake City and the missionaries had me laughing. If you live in Salt Lake City and are surrounded by Latter-day Saint culture, you feel the vibe a lot, so it’s easy to get a big kick out of that stuff. I feel like I could see half of my friends filling those roles.
CM: I thought the two leads, Liam Tobin as the egotistical Elder Price and the hapless nerd Elder Cunningham played by Jordan Matthew Brown, were both strong, as vocalists and especially as comedians. Brown’s timing was spot on and Tobin had just the right balance of Elder Price’s deeply-hid worries and his belief that his mission would make him the Latter-day Saint hero he always believed he was. And I had to laugh at Elder Price’s abiding love for Orlando and all of its magical theme parks (especially Disney World), knowing I was one of the ones being skewered in this joke.
HS: Tobin hit the mark each time. And he was certainly believable as a young, goal-oriented man determined to find his way to Orlando. I would have appreciated it, though, if Parker and Stone had made it so that Price really wants to visit Disneyland instead of Walt Disney World, since a young Utahn probably has more memories from the former as opposed to the latter.
Still, we get some pretty entertaining moments from these opening 20 minutes. All the missionaries who sing along with them are spot on each time. You feel like they’re all friends from the start, and they do a great job of jelling on stage.
CM: Good call about Disneyland — I agree that would have been a better fit, although I guess writing lyrics with the word “Anaheim” just didn’t have the same ring as “Orlando.”
The musical started to get cringy for me when the two elders were assigned to Uganda — a strange inaccuracy considering that real missionaries show up to the MTC already knowing where they will serve. (Also, note to Trey and Matt: No mission president would ever wear a light-colored suit.) “The Lion King” jokes started immediately (and never really let up) and I found myself thinking of the crude term President Donald Trump used in January 2018 for impoverished countries. The Uganda of “The Book of Mormon” is violent, filthy and full of disease and hopelessness. And as people around me laughed, I wondered, “Is this how we, as Americans, view African countries?” According to this musical, there is nothing redeeming about this nation. And as the production went on, I found its portrayal of the Ugandan people to be even worse than its portrayal of the country.
HS: Totally. The play starts to sort of lag for me when they’re in the airport and they make the first of 1,000 “Lion King” references. Seriously. There is so much “Lion King.” But it appears to be the one cultural reference America has to the continent of Africa, so it would make sense for young men who haven’t seen the world yet to believe “The Lion King” is Africa, and Africa is “The Lion King.” But haven’t we progressed past that? Aren’t we all aware that Africa is definitely not like “The Lion King” in 2019?
And let me say this — I’m not a fan of all the Uganda shade. It seriously feels like they’re poking fun at Africa and Uganda, specifically. Like you said, Cristy, I get that this is probably a pointed jab at ignorant Americans and how they view Africa. But it feels like we’re past that in our modern culture.
Speaking of modern times, there’s also a blatant shooting scene that I found super off-putting. The woman next to me actually jumped when the general pulled the trigger, killing one of the villagers. With all the discussion about gun violence, mass shootings and whatnot in the media these days, the shooting scene feels a little uncomfortable and certainly dated from when the play first debuted. Dated much?
CM: I agree. The play has a very dark undertone. That neighboring village warlord who shot the villager also mutilates women, and there are countless references in those highly hummable tunes to the high percentage of AIDS in Uganda and plenty of other terrible things. I understand that this is part of Parker and Stone’s “South Park” gig: Find things that people would never make into jokes and then say really outrageous things about them. That humor definitely shocks, but for me, the jokes didn’t move beyond shocking. The musical didn’t make me any more sympathetic to whatever real Ugandans are going through. I wasn’t educated; I wasn’t entertained. Rather, it felt like someone ran up to me, gave me a verbal slap on the head and ran away giggling.
This seems like a good time to talk about how the musical uses stereotypes. In it, we get Latter-day Saint missionaries who are gullible, cheerful and great dancers (obviously) and Ugandan villagers who are gullible, downtrodden and also great dancers (obviously). I would have loved to have seen the musical push past those stereotypes, showing more nuanced and fully lived-in characters. There are hints near the end, with Elder Price’s character’s worldview falling apart when he realizes that everything he prays for doesn’t come true, but not enough to actually make him feel like a real person.
HS: Totally! The musical doesn’t take many leaps or bounds since it relies heavily on the stereotypes of Latter-day Saints and Africans, none of which are truly original since, well, we’ve heard those stereotypes for years now.
CM: I know I’m not “The Book of Mormon’s” target audience. I’ve never been a “South Park” fan and I hate crude. But the bummer for me, as an active member of the very church this musical skewers, is that it actually contains some smart and interesting satire about my religious culture that is wrapped up in a very — very — smelly diaper. The song “Turn It Off” is a genuinely funny take on religious people’s desire to sometimes turn a blind eye to things that don’t fit into our prescribed beliefs. But, again, the characters never progress and never move beyond the initial joke. So as the play goes on, that smart satire starts to wear thin.
All in all, for me, I couldn’t stomach the musical’s racism, its crude humor and the feeling of being patronized in my beliefs by two guys throwing stones from the outside. Parker and Stone seem to think that being a believer is synonymous with being naive. In my experience, being a believer means grappling — intellectually and emotionally — with doubt, the unknown, expectations and so many of life’s big questions and still choosing hope in things that no one, including the creators of “South Park,” have hard answers for.
HS: There’s no denying that the play has hints of being more than it is. The music sounds good, the themes are sort of there and the characters are animated. But the lyrics and content make several songs — I’m looking at you, “Hasa Diga Eebowai” and “Joseph Smith American Moses” — unbearable and cringe-worthy. Even the song “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” tasted bitter — almost as bitter as the faux-Starbucks coffee cups that appear on stage during the performance. The themes are there but there’s not enough depth to make it all palatable. It’s clear what the musical is trying to get at — that belief is a nice enough thing but it doesn’t matter what you believe in — but that’s just it: It was trying to get somewhere but, for me, it never really landed.
As someone who is not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it’s intriguing to see some of the cultural stereotypes of Salt Lake City and Utah residents play out on stage. But a lot of them are either completely wrong, offensive to the church or too close to potty-humor to take seriously. And the real offenses are seen in the way the play approaches race, making a consistent joke out of Uganda, Africa and the people who live there. As Cheryl Hystad pointed out in a Baltimore Sun opinion piece, “The Book of Mormon” plays into this idea of the “white savior complex — that whites are superior to blacks and that only we can save blacks from themselves.” With the current divide in the country and the resurgence of white supremacy, is this a production we really want to embrace? Aren’t we better than celebrating a musical that pokes fun at Africa and its communities? Maybe it’s time we put “The Book of Mormon” musical to rest and find something that will bring us together rather than divide us.
Content advisory: Pervasive strong language, sexual references and violence. If a film, “The Book of Mormon” would be rated R.