TU: Review - ‘Book of Mormon’ still funny, still irreverent and still filthy
Florida Times-Union
When the FSCJ Artist’s Series brought the “The Book of Mormon” to Jacksonville two years ago, a lot of the audience I saw it with was quite enthusiastic.
After all it is what the New York Times has called it: “The best musical of the century.” It is what Entertainment Weekly has called it: “The funniest musical of all time.”
But a fair number of people in that audience were not very happy. Some walked out.
That was understandable. “The Book of Mormon” is unquestionably the dirtiest musical of all time. Filthy language. Obscene sexual allusions. A completely profane look not just at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but at religion in general.
But the show is just so amazingly funny, so wickedly satirical, so deliciously irreverent.
And the audience I saw it with this week clearly knew what they were about to see and greeted it with wild enthusiasm. It’s been playing on Broadway for almost six years and touring the country for almost five. By now if you wander into “The Book of Mormon” unprepared for the irreverence you are about to experience and come away offended you have only yourself to blame.
The story is simple: Two Mormon teenagers, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham, are assigned to go together to Uganda and convert the locals. Price is a serious, self-absorbed, determined to be the best Mormon missionary ever. Cunningham is fat, sloppy and prone to making things up.
They arrive in their assigned village to discover that the locals, preoccupied with poverty, famine, AIDS and a bloodthirsty local warlord obsessed with female genital mutilation, aren’t much interested in being converted to a strange new religion with a strange, complicated back story.
The production now playing at the Moran Theater in The Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts is first rate, with great sets and special effects and a splendid cast.
Charlie Patton: (904) 359-4413
THE BOOK OF MORMON
Where: Moran Theater in The Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, 300 Water St.
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday; 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $48.50-$147.50
Information: (904) 442-2929; www.fscjartistseries.org