Tomorrow is a Latter Day

I've been wanting to see Book of Mormon practically since it debuted on Broadway. So when we found out that it was coming to the Kennedy Center this summer, we jumped at the chance to buy tickets. And on Sunday Kevin, Sarah, Zach, and I climbed to the very top of the Kennedy Center and sat in the second to last row to enjoy the show.

The plot is pretty basic. Two young, optimistic Mormon men take off on a mission trip to Uganda. There they find themselves in a situation they never expected and aren't entirely prepared to deal with. The village to which they're assigned is under the thumb of a ruthless warlord, their friends and family are dying from violence and disease, and they're in no mood to listen to some preachers tell them about a better life. One missionary despairs and tries to get transferred to a cushy posting in Orlando. The other lies his head off, mixing the biblical stories up with his favorite science fiction and fantasy to give them a little more flair. They learn lessons about friendship and perseverance and helping each other and everything ends happily because this is, after all, musical theater.

The songs were a lot of fun. There was a great representation of the horrors of dysentery and a surprisingly dirty song about baptism. The show had a very South Park sensibility, which should come as no surprise, but it wasn't always my favorite thing. Arnold messed up the lead lady's name so many times that I left the theater unsure of what her name actually was. I felt like that joke, which wasn't really funny to begin with, had some serious diminishing returns. The guy complaining about maggots in his scrotum also felt cheap and offensive. But there was some great stuff in the absurdity of Mormon belief and in the yawning chasm between what the Africans imagined America to be like (all the flour you can eat! Red Cross on every corner!) and the reality.

I also liked the ultimate message of the play, which is that the specifics of your scripture matter a lot less than the message. So the Latter-Day Saints Americanization of Christianity (The Garden of Eden is in Minnesota!) ultimately doesn't matter as much as their message to be courteous and helpful in all things. Although they should probably do something about the racism inherent in their creation myth.

Ultimately this isn't my favorite musical and I have no desire to run out and buy the soundtrack. Though I have since listened to the whole thing on YouTube. But it was a fun evening with more laughs than cringes.