The Book of Mormon
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin
★★★★☆
Like a salesman ringing your bell, it’s back with a partially revised script and even more glee: The Book of Mormon, the certainty-puncturing musical by the South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and the songwriter Robert Lopez, has embarked on a month-long bid to convert Dublin audiences to their nothing-is-sacred faith. The evidence points to more rapturous success.
The show, which revolves around a ridiculously misguided mission to spread the word of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Uganda, is notorious for its grown-up material, with its reputation hinging on the audience’s ability to differentiate between jokes that are “about” awful things and jokes that invoke awfulness in the course of targeting something else completely.
The troubles of the Ugandans – they’re busy dealing with the horrors of female genital mutilation, Aids and gun-toting generals – throw into sharp relief the naivety of the Mormon missionaries’ fervour, with their white-saviour conviction and Lion King-style view of Africa mercilessly sent up before they even leave Salt Lake City.
As might be expected from a musical codirected by its choreographer (Casey Nicholaw, alongside Parker), the dancing and movement are key vehicles for the satire, with highlights of the first half including the parodic tapfest Turn It Off, the comic reversal of Hasa Diga Eebowai (a take-off of Disney’s pollyannaish number Hakuna Matata) and Man Up, a song that has our logic-deprived Mormons reinterpret the Crucifixion through the casual toxicity of 21st-century-speak.
10 of the best new shows to watch in April: including Netflix medical drama and two AppleTV+ releases
MobLand review: Pierce Brosnan’s Irish accent is a horror for the ages. Forget licence to kill, this is more Darby O’Gill
Steve Wall: ‘When Bono was offered the medal, I tweeted: Surely he won’t accept that. I didn’t know he already had’
‘It is so expensive in Dublin we decided to rent’: Swedish embassy returns to capital
But it’s after the interval that this show really gets going, with the dazzling Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, in which Jesus informs the self-centred Elder Price (Adam Bailey) that he’s a dick, and the hilarious I Am Africa, in which Elder Cunningham (Sam Glen) namechecks a certain Irish rock group’s frontman turned activist to much audience spluttering.
Glen has tons of fun in a role that was originated by the Frozen star Josh Gad and bears some bumbling resemblance to Fr Dougal, in Father Ted. Elder Cunningham is a fantasist who hasn’t actually read the Book of Mormon and winds up blending tenets of his religion with elements of Star Trek, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings.
In a joke about American ignorance, he also repeatedly butchers the name of the Ugandan heroine Nabulungi (a wonderful Nyah Nish) with increasingly ludicrous variations that generate some of the biggest laughs of the night.
Among the script revisions introduced in 2021, the Ugandan characters have been afforded more agency, while an attempt by Nabulungi to send a text on a typewriter – always a dubious inclusion – has been wisely jettisoned in favour of an iPad prop and a gag about Facebook misinformation.
The question remains whether The Book of Mormon, which premiered on Broadway in 2011, has aged, not in terms of its potential to offend but in terms of the relevance of its satirical intent.
Sadly, even a brief glance at Donald Trump’s White House confirms that cultural imperialism, male egotism and committed narcissism – all components of religious zeal – remain rife in the corridors of power and, as such, more than deserving themes for a solid skewering with bonus mirrorballs, jazz hands and joyous songs.
The Book of Mormon is at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, May 3rd
