TribLIVE: Buckle up for a tumultuous ride.
The musical “The Book of Mormon” arrives March 26 at the Benedum Center with dueling distinctions of popular acclaim and notoriety.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the irreverent and anarchic geniuses who gave birth to television's “South Park,” created the musical in collaboration with Robert Lopez, whose “Avenue Q” offered a witty, satirical and outrageously funny Broadway musical about the private lives of some very adult puppets.
5 comments:
First of all I absolutely love show like The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q because they are so different than "standard" theater experiences. Theater that is both provoking and funny is a great way to keep audiences entertained, but also to keep them thinking. I think that more big Broadway shows should push the envelope like The Book of Mormon. I don't know about others, but i really am tired of musicals coming from the same stories I have known for nearly all my life, as good as they may be.
First, it puts a huge smile on my face to see alum Grey Henson in the cover photo. I also didn't know that Stone and Park worked with Lopez on the original project, I was under the impression that it was just the two of them who created the musical. That collaboration doesn't surprise me at all, and I think their style of story-telling and comedy offers a hilarious but raw and honest look at the human condition and how society works. I also enjoy that elements of the show nod to traditional stylings of other musicals and uses them to satirize how traditional American musical theatre shows are structured.
I saw this show when it was in Chicago and I loved it. Yes it's a little racy and inappropriate, but that is no reason not to see the show. I went with my mother and even thought there were times that she was clearly shocked she was still glad that she went. I know it's sold out in a great deal of places but I wish that some people whom wouldn't want to watch the show would buy them selves a ticket just to have the experience.
What a fantastic show. I am still puzzled to this day as to why people are surprised with the shows vulgarity, really guys, watch just one episode of South Park, or Orgazmo, or BASEketball, or Cannibal The Musical. Matt and Trey have made their entire careers on presenting in our face obscene scenes while still maintaining the spirit that the audience should learn something at the end.
Having stood in line 6.5hours to see the production in New York, watching the show this time around was an experience in (a) seeing how the show was adapted for the road (not very much changed, surprisingly), and (b) for people watching as the show happened. What I noticed in last night's show was that there were less shocked faces in the audience around the songs - my guess is that with the propagation of the soundtrack and the knowledge of a few key jokes out in the ether, that people know what "Hasa Diga Eebowai" stood for before walking in the theatre last night. However, the other jokes in dialogue and visual jokes still got the crazy raucous response that the songs got in NYC a few years ago, lending to that notion that as the show has become more well-known it is less "shocking", but it is still sufficiently "funny" to command its reputation.
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