The Book of Mormon Rocks!
Photo. Joan Marcus
You can’t help but speculate on the reception had The Book of Mormon been served up for Ottawa audiences when the National Arts Centre opened in 1969. Ashen-faced horror? Walkouts? A boycott of the NAC?
As it is, the delightfully offensive and sharply funny musical by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone (known for, variously, television’s South Park and the irreverent Broadway show Avenue Q) garnered thunderous applause Wednesday night. Clearly, we revel in obscenity-laced, slice-and-dice attacks on everything from shiny-faced Mormonism, and by extension all forms of intransigent religious belief, to pop culture heroes like Bono.
In a kind of buddy-movie-meets-The-Ugly-American set-up, the story parachutes two newbie Mormon missionaries – the nerdy and needy Elder Cunningham (Nyk Bielak) and the self-regarding Elder Price (Jonathan Cullen) – into a Ugandan village where they join an existing gang of missionaries who have so far been unsuccessful in converting the natives. What the two find is beyond anything they’ve ever imagined: a downtrodden population who deal with the AIDS, poverty and despotism that is their daily life by singing Hasa Diga Eebowai, a catchy tune which, shocking the two white boys in white shirts, translates into an exceedingly obscene suggestion to God.
Peppered with spirited choreography by Casey Nicholaw, who also co-directed with Parker, and a raft of good tunes that pillory even as they please, the tautly executed show plunges Cunningham and Price ever deeper into the grungy waters of reality and fantasy served up Broadway style (the lyrics, alas, were not always audible Wednesday night because of an overly loud orchestra especially in the first act).
The duo, and we, meet a warlord with an unprintable name (a swaggering Corey Jones) whose flair for cruelty, including a dedication to female circumcision, is rivalled only by his sartorial confusion in coupling shorts with ornate cowboy boots. There’s a cynical but belief-hungry group of villagers including the buoyant Nabulungi (the fine-voiced Alexandra Ncube), a potential love interest for Cunningham even if he never once gets her name right. The existing team of credulous Mormon missionaries, led by the self-suppressing gay Elder McKinley (the excellent Grey Henson), crank out Turn It Off, a rousing tune about flicking off untoward arousals as you would a light switch.
There are also spoofs of Broadway musical traditions, a wickedly skewering Bono-like tune called I Am Africa, and a slew of other characters and events as Cunningham, who is the audience’s touchstone, and to a lesser extent Price navigate the shoals of friendship, self-awareness and spirituality.
Cunningham’s coming of age gives the show its feel-good, ultimately reassuring centre. Running counter to that are the musical’s occasional missteps including stupid jokes about sex with an infant based on the belief that sleeping with a virgin will cure AIDS.
Such blunders aside, The Book of Mormon rocks. Mitt Romney would not be amused.
Continues until July 27. Tickets: NAC box office, 1-888-991-2787, nac-can.ca.
The Book of Mormon
National Touring Production
At the National Arts Centre, Southam Hall
Posted on the Ottawa Citizen Wednesday, July 17, 2014