[Shinrei]

From the creaters of South Park, their hit Broadway musical the Book of Mormon. Free listen at NPR.

http://www.npr.org/2...mormon?ps=mh_fl

[cerveza_fiesta]

I saw this on a recent trip to new york. It was still in previews, thus tickets were moderately affordable and it wasn't completely sold out.


All I could say was wow. Wow to everything.

I am a very, very thick-skinned person when it comes to offensive material, but there were parts in this play that I really felt bad laughing...despite not being able to help myself from it.

I can't even describe the levels that they take this musical to on the offensiveness-o-meter. I mean, they rip hard on mormons and their branch of christianity (which was pretty much a given, considering previous South Park episodes) but they also make light of aids in uganda, have a 5 minute coreographed song called "fuck you god", and in the end they basically say believing in the book of mormon is no different than believing that having sex with frogs can cure aids.

To say the play defines offensiveness isn't really that far from the truth, but not a soul walked out of that theatre before the curtain went down, in fact I didnt' see a single seat empty during the standing ovation at the end.

And despite all that, it wasn't just dick jokes and swears. The play had an original plot, unique characters, good actors, excellent (albeit satirical) musical numbers, skillfully executed coreography and all the other hallmarks of a genuinely good musical.

But...

this is in the religion thread, so I'm not really sure where to take the discussion...I guess that was my impression of the play as a completely non-religious person. Utterly offensive but also wholly entertaining. The most funny parts to me were the parts where they were acting out literal excerpts from the book of mormon...out-of-context as those excerpts may have been.

I was surprised to see that the mormon church executive (or whatever it's called) didn't react in outrage...in fact their reply was pretty meek in comparison to some of their press releases in the past. I don't have exact quotes, but they basically said "yep it's a satirical presentation of some parts of the book of mormon that doesn't represent the whole of our beliefs", or something along those lines. It was a smart way to react really. It doesn't put them on a defensive or provide unintentional publicity for the play...it just says that they accept its existence and have moved on.

Can't say that was the reaction stone and parker were looking for from the church, considering the awesome press it would have produced had the church reacted in a more inflammatory way.

This post has been edited by cerveza_fiesta: 15 May 2011 - 02:27 PM

[Kanubis]

cerveza_fiesta, on 13 May 2011 - 02:32 PM, said:

Can't say that was the reaction stone and parker were looking for from the church, considering the awesome press it would have produced had the church reacted in a more inflammatory way.

Hmm, from the Morman episode of South Park, I got the impression that just about the only thing they respected about it was that they didn't get all pissy about the ridicule they receive from others.


tell you what, I'm a great Parker & Stone fan, but I'll be reeeeally impressed the day they give Scientology the same treatment. I know they've been willing to mock them in the past, loosing Hayes from the cast in the process, but to do it on this scale? Yeah, that would impress me.