Book Of Mormon

I went to see the “Book of Mormon” musical at the Pantages Theater. I’m not a big fan of Musicals. I never have been. I’m really not a big fan of muscials that have been formed after 1998. Modern Musicals sound like utter garbage to me. They may have decent stories but the music and singing is so shrill and horrific that it has utterly turned me off to going to see them. Shows like Wicked, for example, have such horrible singing that it has ruined the entire show for me. It sounds like the characters are screaming their lines out with no melody or skill, just yelling lines…it’s god aweful. The story is beautiful and clever but damn I can’t stand the singing. I was scared that the singing in BOM would be an utter dissapointment. To my delight, it was rather good and melodic. The songs were catchy  but not unique as far as melody. They seemed to have been cut from a mold of all broadway musicals. What set it apart from other shows was the clever lyrics and dancing. The sets or costumes were nothing special so if you’re expecting costume theatrics of the likes of the “lion king” or something, don’t get your hopes up. I didn’t expect any amazing costume design. The characters are mormon missionaries who are notorious for wearing their white dress shirts with a black tie and black “sunday pants” or dress pants. The remainder of the characters were Ugandians dressed in rags so not much flare in their costumes was either.

The story is about Two Mormon MIssionaries who are sent to Uganda to try to baptise and convert the Afrian people. One Mormon Missionary is your typical do gooder named Kevin. A goody two shoes, know it all who wants to be the best of everything he does and has an expectation of going to Orlando Florida for his first mission but is seriously dissapointed when he is paired up with Arnold, the nerdy, ADHD spaz who has actually never read the book of mormon but just does what he’s told cause he’s a follower. It’s an odd couple pairing.

The Tribe of Uganda who is hosting the missionaries is being harrassed by an evil dictator who wants to cut off all the females clits cause the clit is evil and women shouldn’t be able to have pleasure cause it leads to all things evil. Most of the tribe has AIDS and the tribe leader even jokes to the 2 missionaries that if they mess with his daughter, he will give them his AIDS. So the dictator is trying to control the tribe, the tribe is desparate for a solution to their problems and wouldn’t you know, after a whole lot of subplots and funny shenanigans, the guy they end up going to for help is Arnold, the kid who has never read the bible and who is a major “screw up” but who is desparately trying to impresse people so he makes up things about the book of mormon to try to get the tribe to find it interesting enough to convert. Arnold is a huge sci fi nerd so he mixes in stories of Darth Varder and the death Star and stories of the mormon founder, Joseph Smith fucking a frog to rid himself of AIDS. The Afriacans are hooked on the religion and decide to convert. Arnold single handedly converts 20 africans and this pleases the Elders of the church back in the states so they come to Africa to thank him personally. The Africans want to show their appreciation of Arnold as well so they decide to put on a play for the elders to show them everything they have learned, included the part about Joseph smith fucking a Frog so that he wouldn’t have to fuck a baby to cure his aids. The elders are extremely offended and kick Arnold and his partner who during some of the Shenanigans had dumped Arnold as a friend and then gotten in to some trouble with the evil dictator and got a Book of Mormon shoved up his ass. Kevin realizes that Religion is good, even if it’s all a bunch of mad of crap, because it helps people cope with the shitty things in their life. Before the Africans where using the phrase “hasa Diga eebowai” to cope with their issues…….but now they had awesome stories about Joseph Smith curing AIDs with frog fucking to make them have faith that things could get better. It was a cute play and a good moral. I was raised Mormon so I found a lot of the things in the play to extremely hysterical. I really was entertained by the flamboyantly gay missionary who was telling Kevin and Arnold about the “mormon trick” of just shutting off all your confusing thoughts so that you just didn’t think about them….thoughts like being gay….just shut it off and ignore it cause that’s what mormons do…..and then another mormon chimes in about how his dad use to beat his mom when he was a kid and he used the mormon trick as well and just “shut it off” its all rather humourous and sad if you know mormons.

Any fart…..that’s my review. I thought it was really delightful, mostly cause there was toilet humor and that is always hysterical but it was cute and it’s not forcing religion down your throat but it does put a nice spin on things AND it explains a lot about what the mormon faith is which I think is nice for those ignorant people out there who think mormons are evil. I recommend this show to anyone.