Book of Mormon

This last weekend I went to Spokane to see Book of Mormon in the theater there. I've wanted to see this musical since I first heard about it ages ago. It premiered on Broadway in 2011 so that's probably been a while. 

This is the fourth Broadway musical I've seen. I saw Miss Saigon in Portland (and hated it; someone needed to warn me it was an opera). I saw The Producers (which was hilarious) on Broadway. And I saw Young Frankenstein in its "out-off-town tryout" run in Seattle. It was pretty good but the first act needed to be shorter.

I grew up in Southeast Idaho, an area with a great deal of Mormons. I remember hearing that the small town I lived in was 80 - 90 percent Mormon (I understand Mormons don't like that word "Mormon" any more and prefer to be called "LDS" which stands for "Latter-Day Saints" as the official name for the church is "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"). Over many attempts to recruit me into their religion, I learned a lot about their... interesting theology. 

The Book of Mormon follows two Mormon missionaries from their training in Utah to a small village in Uganda. There the locals suffer with AIDS and there's a warlord going around killing people and mutilating female genitals. Yes, this is a musical comedy.

There are some quick vignettes explaining Mormon theology as necessary background to the story. 

And, yes, the musical is funny. The two main characters are an over-confident missionary and his "companion" for the two-year mission, a guy who over-compensates for his lack of confidence. The main female character is an Ugandan villager named Nabulungi. The over-compensating missionary keeps calling her by the wrong name such as "Neutrogena" and "Ozempic." While trying to convert the villagers, the over-compensating missionary starts to embellish the Book of Mormon to make it more interesting. This leads to a funny scene where the villagers put on a play about Joesph Smith for a Mormon leader and, of course, it is all wrong.

I couldn't complain about the musical much. The villagers did tend to drop F-bombs a lot. Even the songs were fun, though. I enjoyed it a lot and am glad I saw it.

If you're interested or care, you can learn more here (from the Mormon perspective). The Mormons claim that Jesus Christ came to North America after he was resurrected. They also say that a lost tribe of Israel somehow made it to North America. This is all told about in their "third testament" of The Book of Mormon.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

(I don't have a "Broadway Musical" label so I used "Movies and Television.")