The Book of Mormon
★★★★☆ Something incredible
Playhouse: Tue 15 Oct – Sat 2 Nov 2024
Review by Rebecca Mahar
“Africa is nothing like the Lion King,” laments naïve, egotistical, nineteen year old Mormon missionary Elder Price, after having his dreams of spending his two year mission in Orlando Florida shattered, replaced by mud huts, AIDS, and a murderous general.
Sent to Uganda with his mission partner — anxious, awkward, Elder Cunningham — Elder Price quickly learns that the world is nothing like he was taught at Missionary Training Camp as The Book of Mormon returns to the Edinburgh Playhouse on its latest tour, bringing Salt Lake City, Uganda, and various Mormon fantasies to the stage.
A Scene from The Book of Mormon (London Cast)
Written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, best known for creating the animated sitcom South Park with Robert Lopez, co-creator of musical Avenue Q, the show is as ribald and irreverent as fans of those names might expect.
Mormon sails turbulent waters with its content and humour, wavering between satire and offence, depending on who you ask and their point of view. The show is shocking on purpose, but whether it goes too far – or is effective – are questions that have followed it since its 2011 debut.
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, a group of twenty current and former Broadway cast members of Mormon wrote to the creative team, asking them to take another look at the show and address some of its elements that they felt could be handled differently.
workshop
After a workshop involving cast members from Mormon companies around the globe, the show re-opened in 2021 with a slate of changes made to strengthen the African characters, remove or update certain lines, and sharpen the show’s satire of the Mormon church. These changes are reflected in the current UK tour. Whether or not they are enough to make the show palatable to a 2024 audience is very much a matter of taste.
A Scene from The Book of Mormon (London Cast).
Upon their arrival in Uganda, Elders Price and Cunningham meet local girl Nabulungi (whose father first tells her to “stay the fuck away from them”) and other villagers, all of whom are highly sceptical of them. After being taken to the regional missionary headquarters, Price and Cunningham discover that the rest of the Mormon missionaries they’ll now be working with have not succeeded in converting a single local to the church.
When warlord, General Butt Fucking Naked threatens the entire female population of the village with FGM, Nabulungi hatches a plan to get everyone to convert so they can all escape to Salt Lake City. But Elder Price has abandoned the mission, leaving Elder Cunningham to lead the new converts into the church— whether he knows what the Book of Mormon actually says or not.
Newcomer Nyah Nish plays Nabulungi with wit, charm, and an optimism matched by her devastation when her dreams of escape from violence are dashed. In her big number “Salt Lake City,” she shows both Nabulungi’s true hope for a better future, and the sinister hope that missionaries can bring to the communities they visit, when unexplained spiritual metaphors can result in real danger to the people who are left behind when they leave.
shiny, ignorantly confident perfection
Elder Price is played to shiny, ignorantly confident perfection by Adam Bailey, whose dance and movement are particularly sharp. Fittingly for a performer who has previously put in a turn as Munkustrap in Cats, Bailey’s physical precision is a highlight of his performance, managed while belting out such star-power numbers as You and Me (But Mostly Me).
Ensemble work in this production is excellent, with the two ensembles within the ensemble putting in stellar performances. The Ugandan ensemble are cohesive in their lived-in village world, always connecting with each other to show longstanding relationships, and disbelief at the white-saviour antics of the missionaries. Tolu Ayanbadejo is a standout in this superlative crowd, with a facial expressiveness that’s always worth watching.
A Scene from The Book of Mormon (London Cast)
Among the Mormons, Elder McKinley has stepped out of Old Hollywood in the form of Tom Bales, a smarmy, repressed delight in taps. At the missionary training centre, Elder Grant might as well be a cartoon character (in the best possible way), all big eyes and sincerity. As a group, the missionaries are slick, sharp, and always seeming a bit unreal, in contrast to their African counterparts.
Special mention must also go to Ross McKenna, standby for Elder Cunningham who played the role on the night Æ visited. Any large production lives and dies on the strength of its standbys, understudies, and swings, and McKenna put in a superb performance. His Elder Cunningham is sincere, guileless, and self-aware when it counts, trying to do his best in a world that isn’t made for him.
On the creative and technical side, the original direction, choreography, and design of The Book of Mormon are superbly reproduced in the touring setting by a suite of associates and heads of department, as well as Resident Director Leigh Constantine, Dance Captain Rory Shafford, and Assistant Dance Captain Jessica Oppong.
satirical points
As a creative production, Mormon is superb. However, it’s not possible to divorce excellent performances, brilliant design, and catchy music from the content of a show.
Anyone unfamiliar with The Book of Mormon should do their research before attending, and decide if it’s for them— and be prepared to think about it afterwards, for within the jokes about maggoty scrotums, repeated mispronunciations of Nabulungi’s name, and the insistence of one character that the cure for his AIDS is to sexually assault a baby, satirical points are being made.
When you laugh at Mormon, do you laugh at the Ugandans, or with them at the absurdity of their situation, when in terrible situations sometimes all you can do is laugh (or say hasa diga eebowai)? Do you see the depiction of the Mormon church as lighthearted and silly, or a pointed commentary on its religion? Does today’s musical theatre still have a place for this show, or will it fade into history as sensibilities evolve? Only you can decide.
Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes (including one interval)
Playhouse, 18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA
Tue 15 Oct – Sat 2 Nov 2024.
Mon – Sat: 7.30pm; Fri, Sat mat: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
A Scene from The Book of Mormon (London Cast)
ENDS
