The Book of Mormon

I don't have a lot to say about The Book of Mormon as a first impression. It is a very popular musical, even with Mormon communities. I saw it when I was 17 back home in Sydney. Since then I've listened to the songs to a point of familiarity that I always sing along (though of course I didn't when I saw it this week).

The Book of Mormon follows 2 missionaries as they go to Uganda in hopes of converting a small village to follow their beliefs, to some unexpected (and unorthodox) success.

What I liked

The songs are all very catchy tunes. The integration of legitimate Mormon facts into the lyrics make every song a ticking time bomb for laughter from the audience, and the performers all did a wonderful job of singing what are undeniably hard songs to sing at times.

Interestingly, on this watch I came to the realisation that despite the framing of the show putting Elder Price as our hero and Elder Cunningham as his sidekick, Cunningham is undeniably the main character! I'm not sure if this is a wild take or not, perhaps my many years of watching Andrew Rannells sing at the Tony Awards has biased me unfairly, but the emotional drive of the show is undeniably Cunningham's desire to fit in, not Price's questionable relationship to religion.

Since I last saw it, I believe there have been changes made in an attempt to combat racism within the story, which I felt were effective.

What wasn't my favourite

Listen, jokes about diarrhoea or books shoved up someone's ass, not the way to make me laugh, and I do think that even with the changes it can still be a bit problematic with it’s depiction of Ugandan people, but I can't go to a show written by the creators of South Park and expect a clean humour show. That's on me.

My only very small criticism is that sometimes the choreography felt a bit lacking. Though impressively clean, there was a level of physical rigidity that made some dances from the Mormons less fun, and there was a feeling of repetitiveness at times.

Overall

It was fun to see again, and more enjoyable with the changes made since I saw it last, but I don't think I’ll need to see it again for a while (though the songs may start being reintroduced to my Spotify roster). For me, I think Book of Mormon will always be a jumping off point for discussions about religion and faith, though with the changes I am quite interested in it becoming that for discussions of being online and misinformation.