I was excited. This was my first trip to New York City in nearly two years, and I was sitting in great seats — scalped, of course — at the hottest new comedy musical in town: The Book of Mormon. The wild-and-crazy Broadway fling from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I’ve always been a huge fan, and I couldn’t wait to see the play. It was their first big musical, the critics were raving, you couldn’t get a seat and it was nominated for 14 Tony Awards — the highest honour in theatre south of the border.
I made sure that The Book of Mormon was saved for the last night of my three-day trip.
It’s been a strong theatre season in New York, so choosing plays was a challenge. On my first night was the well-reviewed musical from the ’60s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I found it a breathtaking revival of a mediocre play. The next night, we tacked left, literally, and headed downtown to see Tony Kushner’s new four-hour opus The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures.
The play was only slightly more exhausting than its title. Not a lot of laughs, but it was so brilliant it made me want to buy a copy of the play. But I still had one eye cocked on the next night. Settling into our $300 seats just before curtain, we felt that frisson of excitement that often precedes a hit show.
The lights dimmed. Applause already. The first number, a clever take on the Mormons who go door to door, was fresh and witty. So far, so good.
Then the plot is set up. It seems that young Mormon missionaries upon graduation are paired up in a buddy system and sent somewhere in the world to preach the gospel. Our protagonists are not sent to Paris or Orlando, but to a remote village in central Africa. Do I smell a fish-out-of-water comedy?
When they get there, the Africans have little interest in the missionaries. They have bigger problems — starvation, AIDS and violent warlords. And so begins the best and edgiest number of the evening with a title so scandalous you couldn’t print it here. I was shocked that a mainstream audience was howling at the song, but they were and so was I.
And then … nothing. The show went downhill from there, having peaked at the 20-minute mark. It was repetitive, corny and offensive to both Mormons and Africans. The leads did nothing for me; the songs were unmemorable; and except for a fantasy of Hell early in the second act, the visuals were cheap and pinched.
The entire show felt like a Hope/Crosby movie performed by a fringe troupe with a rich uncle. I know, I’m in the minority here. There was so much hype going in to the show that no one seemed to notice the emperor had no clothes.
I’ve seen this phenomenon before, a version of physicist Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: if you think something’s going to be funny, chances are you will find it funny. It’s often why major stars can get away with lousy material.
A few weeks later, The Book of Mormon did win all those Tonys. The awards show broadcast featured Neil Patrick Harris’ opening number, “Broadway’s Not Just for Gays Anymore.” Ironically, the song about musicals was funnier than the songs in the musicals they were celebrating. Somebody should hire the writers of that song and get them to write a real musical. I’ll bet that would be worth the hype.
Post City Magazines’ humour columnist, Mark Breslin, is the founder of Yuk Yuk’s comedy clubs and the author of several books, including Control Freaked.
