Hello! The Book of Mormon rings our doorbell again, at the Jube. A review

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

Hello! They’re back.

There was a time — 14 years ago when The Book of Mormon instantly became the hottest ticket on Broadway — that assorted cultural prophets predicted fearlessly that the puckish lampoon of religion, American exceptionalism, and musical theatre would never play the hinterland.

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Too insubordinate. Too foul-mouthed. Too much fun at the expense of  (omg)… a church. When I first saw it in New York in 2011, the New Yorker sitting next to me laughed so hard she actually fell right out of her seat (which made all of us up there in the balcony laugh even more).

Well, the hit run of the Tony magnet musical comedy continues to this day on Broadway and in the West End. And its eager-beaver Mormon missionary platoon, selling “the secret of eternal life” door to door, is still on the road. Which is, after all, where missionaries go to spread the word.

Sam McLellan and the company of The Book of Mormon, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Julieta Cervantes

And here we are, with the touring production that rang our doorbell again Tuesday night at the Jube. And I’m here to report that even if you can’t get a laugh just from saying the title after all this time, the sight of a cotillion (regiment?) of beaming whitebread missionaries in short-sleeved white shirts with ties and name tags, in formation, is still pretty funny. And when this showbiz brigade breaks into a full-scale musical theatre production number, Turn It Off, a jaunty Broadway ode to staying repressed, and smothering all reasonable doubts and sexual ambiguities — “turn it off, like a light switch, just go click, it’s a cool little Mormon trick “ — it’s downright hilarious.

That’s one of the most appealingly subversive attractions of The Book of Mormon, one that carries the musical into 2024. It launches its shivs in the cheekiest possible way, via the high-spirited conventions of the American musical theatre. Aspirational anthems (“you and me, but mostly me, are going to change the world together!” sings Elder Price), self-empowerment numbers (Man Up), inspirational odes (I Believe), romantic ballads (Baptize Me), the moments when intensity inevitably turns into song-and-dance … all the trappings are there.

The Book of Mormon, as you already know, is the work of the South Park guys Trey Parker and Matt Stone, with their equally irreverent collaborator Robert Lopez of Avenue Q fame. They’re putting a well-placed boot up the butt of white American cultural ignorance and arrogance, Mormonism, and religious literalism by framing all of the above as a classic American musical. Ah, and one crammed with playful allusions — to The Sound of Music, The King and I, The Lion King, and even the telephone scene of Bye Bye Birdie.

Even in this era of growing awareness of colonialism in all its subtle byways (and its overt ones, post-American election), it’s hard to imagine a funnier, more telling, target than the whitest of white missionary choruses claiming “We are Africa!” in a highlight production number. “With the strength of the cheetah, my native voice will ring.”

And what of the Broadway Across Canada production, the first since 2016, that’s arrived on our doorstep? You’ll come to appreciate how well cast it is, in the course of the evening. But the sound mix  on opening night veered distractingly from brassy, forward metallic sheen to the kind of murk where voices fade in and out. Which meant missing some of the fun of the lyrics, which is a shame. The outstandingly inventive, allusive choreography, though (originally by Casey Nicholaw (The Drowsy Chaperone), executed by a nimble ensemble who dig with gusto into the Broadway tradition, never stops being riotous.       

Sam McLellan in The Book of Mormon, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Julieta Cervantes

At the outset, after an amusingly stagey pageant of the 19th century origins of Mormonism, we meet a mismatched pair of Mormon missionaries on assignment in a world they know absolutely nothing about. Elder Price, played with comic earnestness by Sam McLellan, is the uptight, self-important class over-achiever. He is more than a little dismayed to find himself paired, in a two-year mission to Uganda, with the friendless class loser and pop-culture nerd Elder Cunningham. Played in broad comic strokes by Diego Enrico, Elder Cunningham, whose reference bank is Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, has never even heard of Uganda.

They arrive in a village where the population has more pressing matters to attend to — poverty, AIDS, a war lord with an unprintable name and a particular focus on female circumcision — than the seminal biography of Joseph Smith, “the all-American prophet.” And while Elder Price, the born leader, is grappling with his shock (The Lion King “took a lot of poetic licence,” he feels), the needy Elder Cunningham, the born follower, is bonding with the villagers. Ah, and especially the village maiden Nabulungi (sweetly, breathlessly, played by Keke Nesbitt), by means of his predilection for pop-culture narratives.

Diego Enrico in The Book of Mormon, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

It’s a strong cast (even if their singing was undercut by the vagaries of sound on opening night). Craig Franke is very funny as the nearly-closeted Elder McKinley, leader of the local district missionaries. And so is the fierce General with the unprintable name (Dewight Braxton Jr.), enraged and perplexed equally by the American soul-savers.

It’s possible that Elder Price’s “spooky Mormon hell dream” goes on a  little long (though the dancing Starbucks Ventes remain a nice touch). But the villagers’ own original version of the life of Joseph Smith is to be prized.

In response to concerns of Black cast members about the depiction of Africans, the show’s creators tweaked the narrative in 2021, so the satire targeting white Mormonism became sharper, and gave the villagers, especially Nabulungi, a bigger, more knowing and sophisticated, role to play in gaining the upper hand. This boost in agency, with its vindication of storytelling and its zest for the comically outrageous, couldn’t be more timely. It’s a moment in our collective history when cultural complacency and the sense of superiority look more dubious, and ridiculous, than ever. There’s fun to be had in seeing them dismantled.

REVIEW

The Book of Mormon

Broadway Across Canada

Created by: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Robert Lopez

Directed by: Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker (originally); Jennifer Werner (touring)

Starring: Sam McLellan, Diego Enrico, Keke Nesbitt, Craig Franke, Lamont J. Whitaker, Trevor Dorner, Dewight Braxton Jr.

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

Running: through Sunday

Tickets: ticketmaster.ca