By Eric George Tauber
SAN DIEGO — We’ve all had them come to our door, those clean-cut, baby-faced teenagers –who use the title “Elder” for some reason- in their starched, white, short-sleeved button down shirts and little black name tags. With wide eyes and toothy grins, they seem cheesily cheerful as they try to convert us.
“When you’re Mormon, you don’t question. You just believe.”
When you think about it, the stories of all religions sound pretty incredible to the unindoctrinated. So one hesitates to criticize. But some premises are just too absurd. The idea that the First Nations of the Americas were actually expat Israelis so tickled Mel Brooks that he spoke Yiddish as the Indian Chief in Blazing Saddles. And if you look closely, his headdress reads כשר לפסח (Kosher for Passover).
Young Mormons look forward their whole lives to their missions, a two-year stint where they can be immersed in a foreign culture. They could drift through the fjords of Norway, eat buttery croissants in France or sample sashimi in Japan. It’s an adventure of a lifetime.
“There’s no limit to what we can do, you and me, but mostly me.”
Elder Price is the ideal Mormon missionary: bright, strapping, charming and devout. Everyone expects him to reel them in to baptism like an expert fisherman. So he’s paired with Elder Cunningham, the opposite, a high-strung nebbish with “an overactive imagination.” Liam Tobin and Jordan Matthew Brown make a great team. Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Tobin sings with great confidence and conviction until his pedestal gets shaken. Brown is annoying and easy to underestimate, but don’t.
“Hasa diga eebowai.”
The pair are sent to a jungle village in Uganda where life is hard and dangers are many. There are lions, lice and scorpions. There’s political unrest and AIDS is epidemic. When your life is filled with misfortune, you need a catchphrase to cope. Where we have Shver tzu tun a Yid (It’s tough to be a Jew) they have Hasa diga eebowai (F* You, Up There!).
Corey Jones has a swaggering menace as the General. An African extremist, he’s going from village to village forcing female genital mutilation on all of the women. Mafala is terrified that his daughter Nabulungi, the only family he has left, will fall prey to them. Alyah Chanelle Scott is bright and lovely as Nabulungi. Like Annie, she fantasizes about a building a brighter future in Salt Lake City. And Elder Cunningham looks like low-hanging fruit.
The best part about the music is that it doesn’t come from one place. The Mormons give us some fun hoofing straight out of Anything Goes. The Africans move with an infectious ebullience akin to Lion King even as they bemoan life’s misfortunes. And Elder Cunningham vents a lifetime of pent up frustrations with some cathartic 80s Rock in Man Up. Spooky Mormon Hell Dream is an over-the-top crowd-pleaser straight out of Las Vegas. When your religion forbids even the simple pleasures of a hot cup of coffee, your mind is bound to play tricks on you.
If you have a taste for irreverence, tie on a bib and grab a spoon. The Book of Mormon serves up a multi-course meal of wicked humor with great music. But get there quickly. The Book of Mormon is only playing at the Civic Theatre through July 28th.
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Tauber is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com