THE BOOK OF MORMON
Prince Of Wales Theatre, London W1
Opened 21 March, 2013
****

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are cannier than you might think. Their stage musical about a pair of young Mormon missionaries receiving a harsh dose of reality in rural Uganda sells itself as satire, but in practice it simply presents the apparent absurdities of the Latter-Day Saints faith without explicitly ridiculing them. It is almost true to say that The Lion King comes in for more lampooning than the Mormons. The show works at root as a feelgood evening, but one which successfully disguises its true nature by eschewing genuine sentiment; that is what is really being parodied most consistently, in a subtly defensive strategy.
    
Parker and Stone have astutely recruited Robert Lopez, co-creator of Avenue Q, to give the numbers more musical-theatre oomph. (Giles Terera from the West End production of that show also crops up in the cast.) The lyrics remain a curate’s egg: for every they-wouldn’t-dare coup such as rhyming “Life won’t be so shitty” with “Salt Lake City” or an entire pseudo-African number, “Hasa Diga Eebowai”, explaining the villagers’ philosophy of life which turns out to translate as “Fuck you, God” (don’t claim to be surprised that the show is so expletive-laden), there are a handful of lazy half-rhymes simply to keep the song in question going. And at a few moments one can discern hints that the project may have begun as a satire on the writers’ more familiar target of Scientology before they wimped out: the villain here, a local warlord, is both written and played (by Chris Jarman) more or less as Isaac Hayes, the late voice of Chef on South Park and a devout Scientologist.
    
That said, Parker and Casey Nicholaw’s production sells its bare-faced cheek with enormous technical and performance flair (despite an interruption due to tech problems on opening night) and a brash yet disarming puerile charm. Gavin Creel and Jared Gertner, as smooth Kevin Price and misfit Arnold Cunningham respectively, each have extensive experience in the American production which opened almost exactly two years ago; Alexia Khadime as the principal recruit among the villagers has a similarly strong London record in both plays and musicals. The total creation is neither as perfect nor as audacious as it pretends, but it puts over the package so well that we either do not notice or do not mind.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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