It Sucks to be Mormon

It's no secret that original Broadway musical offerings have been beyond limp lately. So when the guys behind South Park teamed up with the composer-lyricist of Avenue Q, the theater kids obligingly whipped themselves into a frenzy of anticipation. Early enthusiasm has now been corroborated by reviews that exalt The Book of Mormon as the savior of the Broadway Musical. I was at opening last night, and it's pretty great, and very funny - but my my, how contrast elevates the very good to genius heights.

Time Out NY:
As you laugh your head off at perky Latter-day Saints tap-dancing while fiercely repressing gay tendencies deep in the African bush, you will be transported back ten years, when The Producers and Urinetown resurrected American musical comedy...

The Hollywood Reporter:
One of the freshest original musicals in recent memory. It has tuneful songs, clever lyrics, winning characters, explosive laughs and disarmingly intimate moments.

NY Magazine:
Mormon chipperly shitcans all pieties … except the sacred, mystic conventions of musical theater. And therein lies the real miracle: ...Parker and Stone—the sincerest, most serious-minded of social comedians—have effectively closed an irony wormhole that opened with Urinetown, grandpappy of all millennial metamusicals. After Mormon, I like to imagine, the Broadway musical might be free to be a Broadway musical again—even if it is balls-out funny and relevant to audiences under 85.

NY Daily News:

It's a show where you catch yourself laughing one minute, mouth agape the next, eventually wiping away tears, and, finally, cheering.

Meanwhile, Terry Teachout at the Wall Street Journal has a less rapturous reaction, and it's one that I can't disagree with. I really, really wanted to full-stop LOVE this show. Sadly, I didn't, and I find his review pretty spot-on:

Don't let anybody try to tell you that "The Book of Mormon" is suitable for anyone other than 12-year-old boys who have yet to graduate from fart jokes to "Glee." A couple of reasonably effective production numbers notwithstanding, it's flabby, amateurish and very, very safe... The creators of "South Park" like to call themselves "equal-opportunity offenders," but if you think there's anything risky about "The Book of Mormon," you're kidding yourself. Making fun of Mormons in front of a Broadway crowd is like shooting trout in a demitasse cup.

Saturday Ramble: Musings on Broadway, Art, the Future, etc.

Check out Terry Teachout's strike-inspired essay today on the rising expense of a Broadway ticket. Terry asks an essential question: If Broadway costs twice as much today as it did in 1968, is the product twice as good? Are the current crop of plays and musicals even worth the outrageous expense?

It seems to me that the obvious answer is no, Elle Woods and her peers couldn't hold a candle to the Broadway of 1968, with its new plays by Arthur Miller and Brian Friel, performances by Dustin Hoffman, Lotte Lenya, and Zoe Caldwell, and long-running original productions of "Hello, Dolly!", "Hair", and "Fiddler on the Roof". But Terry has a great, and important point that beyond Broadway bashing, the forum for great new work has simply relocated, with the highest quality coming from Off-Broadway and regional productions, which also manage to remain affordable.

Don't get me wrong: I like musicals, the same way I like ice-cream sundaes. But man cannot live by dessert alone, and now that most of Broadway is shuttered, it has become clearer than ever before that there are better and cheaper places to get a steak.

I think we can (mostly) all agree that Off-Broadway and regional theater deserves a lot more attention for all the new work generated. But with the "arbiters of taste" promoting stuff like visits to grocery stores, and spending more time slamming some of Broadway's less interesting fare than discussing theater that's interesting and engaging but happens to take place in smaller houses with less funding... how do you get the butts in the seats? When art gets replaced by reality television and child-star idols, how do you wipe the slate clean? How do you shift the average American's appetite for cultural consumption, and change it from a craving for pink sugary fluff to a desire for something more unknown and adventurous? If we continue down this path we're headed on, is there any room for real art at all?

And hey, I'm not saying the only good theater (or art) is that which does something totally new/experimental/whatever. I really just want to see good stories well-told. That's what I crave. It just happens to be true that the artists who create good stories and tell them well, those artists often run with the creators and innovators who end up doing new, non-traditional work. I think of the innovation more as a positive result of good art, rather than the point and purpose of good art.