THE BOOK OF MORMON HITS A HILARIOUS NOTE
Elder Cunningham ( A. J. Holmes) has a problem with little white lies.
He’s one half of a missionary dynamic duo — a pair of 19- yearold Mormons with high hopes for eternal salvation — who show up in a village in northern Uganda, determined to convert the townsfolk, setting in gear The Book of Mormon, the hilarious, foulmouthed, Tony Award- winning musical created by South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in town for a weeklong run at the Jubilee Auditorium.
Cunningham is a lot of things — anxious, needy and friendless in addition to being highly endearing — or, as he puts it so well at one crucial turning point early on in the show: “I’m a follower,” he says.
The would- be alpha- male — his companion whose side he is never supposed to leave over the course of their two year overseas mission — is Elder Price ( Billy Harrigan Tighe), a square- jawed musical theatre version of a teenage Mitt Romney. Price, who oozes a unique brand of American can- do charisma, isn’t thrilled to have Cunningham as his wingman, but if that’s who the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints assigns you as your sidekick, then it’s time to suck it up, buttercup, and get busy baptizing Africans.
The scenario of The Book of Mormon is not the first thing you’d think of if you were trying to come up with a hit musical, but mix in Stone and Parker’s wicked, raunchy wit along with a sincere passion for the American musical, throw in wonderful performances from a talented cast and out comes a truly original musical as funny as it is catchy.
The songs make the show in a musical and The Book of Mormon is full of some terrific ones.
Most particularly, the duo of Holmes and Alexandra Ncube, as Nabulungi, a young villager who finds herself swept away by Elder Cunningham’s ( highly and hilariously embellished) stories, which he claims are torn from the pages of The Book of Mormon.
First, on Sal Tlay Ka Siti, Nabulungi’s love letter to the Utah city by the salt beds, and later in a brilliant duet on Baptize Me, Ncube and Holmes almost make you want to convert yourself.
Meanwhile, Elder ( he’s 19!) Price, sensing there is no greater glory to be had for a would- be Mormon superstar stuck trying to convert African villagers into a faith that didn’t accept black people until 1978, undergoes a spiritual crisis or maybe pouts because he can’t get transferred to his beloved Orlando, Fla.
Whatever he does, Harrigan Tighe is a mesmerizing performer on stage, whether channelling his