REVIEW: The Book of Mormon - God's Favourite Musical

Another show from over the pond:

Sometimes it’s all about the punctuation. In musicals there’s a modern sub-genre which can best be described as the Unlikely Idea For A Musical! The Musical musical. The really significant bit is the exclamation mark. Now these new exclamation marks are not like the old exclamation marks of, say, an Oklahoma! or an Oliver!. Then they signalled joy and exuberance. Today’s punctuation is more of an ironic wink to the audience: “We know this is silly; you know that we know this is silly. Let’s all be silly and ironic together”. The problem with this approach is that it demeans the form as much as it does the subject matter; musicals as mindless superficiality. But all that ironic silliness is a just cop-out and no substitute for the far harder task of dealing in honest character and genuine feeling. More than funding cuts, jukebox jollies or Heathcliff on Ice, it’s the exclamation mark that truly threatens the future of musical theatre.

As a pretty unlikely idea for a musical The Book of Mormon could easily have gone down this route and turned itself into a piece of self-satisfied religion bashing. Thank Heavenly Father, it didn’t. Instead of being silly in an ironic way, it’s silly in a laugh-out-loud funny way. And amongst all the potty-mouthed so-wrong-it’s-right political incorrectness, it’s sincere and sentimental.

The show is written by South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez. Lopez was the co-author of the puppets-for-grown-ups musical Avenue Q and the same theme of wide-eyed innocents being thrown into the big wild world provides the basic impetus here. Two young Mormon missionaries, Kevin and Arnold, are sent to Uganda to convert the local folks. But the pair’s naive doctrines prove inadequate when dealing with the ills of Africa: poverty, AIDs, warlords and scrotal infestations (don’t ask). Kevin becomes disillusioned whilst Arnold makes up his own version of the Mormon story to try and win over the Ugandans, including a young girl Nabalungi.

One of the problems facing the authors must have been the need for exposition. The Book of Mormon can’t necessarily assume a lot of audience knowledge about the subject. The authors need to get some important facts across. So the centrepiece of the story is Kevin and Arnold’s mission and the big number in Act One, “The All-American Prophet”, sees them leading the locals through the Mormon basics. But it’s also educating us, the audience. Perhaps not in a strictly Mormonistic way (“You mean the bible is actually a trilogy and the Book of Mormon is Return of the Jedi? I’m interested”). But enough so that we get the Joseph Smith highlights:

“He didn’t come from the Middle East like those other Holy Men
No, God’s favourite prophet was All-American”

This set piece is then mirrored in Act II when the now-converted Ugandans act out their understanding of the story for the visiting Mormon bigwig. The problem is that their understanding is based on Arnold’s made-up version which involves the angel Moroni descending from the Starship Enterprise, ewoks dancing merrily in Salt Lake City and significant amounts of ranine fornication (seriously, don’t ask). The point is that all this exposition, which is normally just the boring bits necessary to explain the plot, has become the plot. That’s wonderful book writing and what makes the show work.

What makes the show funny is the cheery advice on how to cope with stultifying feelings of guilt, fear and shame:

“Turn it off like a light switch
Just go click
It’s a nifty
little Mormon trick”

Or perhaps it’s the fey bunch of shirt-and-tied white boys getting in touch with the dark continent:

“We are Africa
Just like Bono, we are Africa”

Let’s be clear: Cole Porter, these songs ain’t. There are no sophisticated rhymes, unexpected melodic structures or crunchy ‘n’ complex harmonies. But then Cole never wrote songs about a Mormon facing down a warlord by grabbing his hand for a white gospel singalong. Funny songs need funny ideas and this is one of the funniest. There are no rhymes. They aren’t even any jokes as such, just statements of faith set to an earnest gospel track:

“I believe
That ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America
I am a Mormon and a Mormon just believes”

Of course we’re being invited to laugh at some of the wackier Mormon beliefs but never at the Mormon characters; we’re still rooting for Kevin. It may not be Porter but, on its own terms, it’s just as good.

There’s obvious confidence in the material. The cast are kept busy by some wonderful vocal arrangements and a few of those tricky Jesus to Darth Vader quick-changes. The two leads, Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad, are spot on. They’re like two opposite types kids you meet at school: one’s the perfectly vain head boy, the other’s the weirdo at the back of the class. Yet you never doubt that their friendship is genuine. The staging adds to the whole with subtle touches of suitable inappropriateness. Such as? Well, things like the Ugandan’s ritualistically symbolic depiction of dysentery with red and brown tasselled sticks (you did ask).

The jokes may be dirty but it’s heart is pure. The Book of Mormon - no exclamation mark - is a spiritual whoopee cushion of a show.

Putting the Con into the Concept

So recently I made my first trip to the Isle of Manhatten. Naturally I managed to squeeze in a couple of shows. One of them said on the bill Catch Me If You Can. So I did.

And this made me think about concept musicals. Now I’m never sure exactly what makes a musical a “concept” musical; it’s a vague term and probably not a little self-important. Yet I have the funny feeling that Catch Me If You Can is an example of one.

So what makes a concept musical? I think there are two aspects to this: THE SONGS and THE FORM.

THE SONGS (ooh, sub-headings).

The songs express a concept rather than a character or situation. A good example of this is “If They Could See Her Through My Eyes” from Cabaret. Ostensibly it’s just a comedy number performed in the Kit Kat club. The joke is that the MC sings this sweet song of love-blind devotion to someone dressed as a gorilla in a tutu. The kicker is the last line:

“I grant you the problem’s not small
But if you could see her through my eyes
[pause] She wouldn’t look Jewish at all”

Suddenly it’s not just an innocent comedy song but a comment on the unfolding drama of the story; the sinister, but alluring, rise of anti-Semitism. The song isn’t expressing a particular character or dramatic situation so much as an idea, a concept.

The other thing I’d say is that concept songs tend to be highly stylised. That is, the style of the song, often a very self-conscious pastiche or parody, is in some way being used to express the drama. Take “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Company which is written as a 1940s close-harmony trio, right down to the patter lyrics (“Bobby booby bobi”) and the vocal glissandi (“Knock, knock, is anybody the-e-ere?”). Now there’s no reason why the three women singing (Bobby’s girlfriends) should sound like the Andrews Sisters. Even the showy rhymes (coercin’ a bull/personable) are characteristic of the style of song rather than the characters. So what is Sondheim up to? He’s not just written a cheery, upbeat song; he’s written of cheery, upbeat song in a very recognisable song style. When we, the audience, hear it we’ll recognise the style and bring all our pre-conceptions to it. In the case of the Andrews Sisters, we think of light and innocent and frothy (“Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”). Having planted this pre-conception, Sondheim can then do the opposite with the lyrics which are biting and acidic:

“You could understand a person
If he actually were dead
Doo doo do do!”

In other words the familiar and understood style of the song is being used to tell the story. Not so much a concept song, perhaps, but a pre-concept song.

So what about the form?

THE FORM

Concept musicals require some disassociation from the story. This can be a disassociation of place (like the Kit Kat club in Cabaret) or of time (like rock songs in an 1891 setting as in Spring Awakening) or of something more abstract. This disassociation allows for an artificial break in the story as the musical moves between dialogue and song. This is why concept musicals often mirror the form of a revue show (Chicago) where the formal scene-song, scene-song structure reflects the clear distinction between the talky bits and the sing-y bits.

This problem of moving from dialogue to song is, I think, at the heart of the way that musicals have developed. Broadly speaking the early musicals of the 20s and 30s ignored the problem; silly plots were punctuated by great songs via the most tenuous of dramatic links. Later the book musical tried to smooth the transition by making the songs an expression of situation and character. More recently the big West End shows overcame the problem by ditching most of the dialogue making everything one long sung-through poperetta.

The concept musical offers another solution. By creating this disassociation or artificial break between the story and song, there’s no need for a smooth transition from dialogue to singing. The songs are still “integrated” in the sense that they are still related to the drama. But there’s none of that fiddly lead-in/underscoring/intro used in book musicals to try and cue a song “naturally”.

Ay, but there’s a rub. Two rubs, in fact (ooh, numbered rubs).

1. The first is that most concept musicals aren’t fully so; most have a mixture of book and concept numbers. Cabaret, again, is a good example with some songs taking place within the Kit Kat club and others in the “real life” of the story. Even Company and Chicago have book numbers (“Barcelona” and “Class” respectively). This suggests that there are some practical limits to the form when it comes to telling a story. Some moments just call for a song to arise naturally from the moment in the narrative, not to be disassociated in an artificial way.

2. The second point is, I think, the bigger problem with concept musicals namely that the concept is always the same. Whether it’s a German nightclub, a Broadway revue or a Chicagoan burlesque, everything is viewed through the prism of entertainment. As Billy Flynn says, “it’s all showbiz, kid!”. This isn’t just a case of “shows about shows”; it’s shows about how everything can only be understood as a show. Sometime this works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Which brings me (finally, I know) to Catch Me If You Can.

**SPOILER ALERT** (ooh, spoiler alerts)

This is a musical based on the film which itself is based on the true life story of Frank Abagnale Jnr, a man who managed to defraud millions of dollars whilst still a teenager. The FBI, in the form of dogged investigator Carl Hanratty, finally caught up with him. Whereupon he was jailed, only to be released early and given a job helping the FBI helping catch other fraudsters. And presumably writing his memoirs.

(Nice little YouTube clips here which give a good feel for the show).

So what makes this a concept musical? Well for one thing some of the numbers are highly stylised which creates that funny old dissociative feeling. Frank and his Pop turn “Make Butter Out of Cream” into a Frank and Deano Vegas act; later Pop is drunkenly propping up the bar with Hanratty swopping boo-hoo stories in a classic saloon-style song “Little Boy, Be a Man”. But these stylisations are really part of a much bigger one.

The show begins at the end with Frank’s arrest. As Hanratty attempts to slip on the ‘cuffs, Frank starts spinning a line, trying to con his way out of trouble one last time. Hanratty’s having none of it. So Frank turns to the audience and makes his appeal directly. Just give me a chance to tell you my story, he says and...ding! We’re into the first number, “Live in Living Color” (or “Colour” – our language, I say we choose the spelling). The whole thing becomes Frank’s “show” in the form of a 1960s TV special. That’s the big concept.

Once again a story is being triple filtered through entertainment for a smoothly plotted outcome.
But I think Catch Me If You Can runs up against the limit of the form. In many ways this was a terrific musical: smart, tuneful, slickly staged and wonderfully performed. And yet , and yet. Somehow the big concept diminishes the drama. This is essentially a How? story. How’d this teenage kid get away with it? We need to hear more about the details of the con: the forged papers, the fake IDs, right down to the specialist inks. Not to the mention how he played the banking system, the payroll processes and the rest. But there’s not enough room for this in a concept musical. Instead the only answer to “How’d he do it?” is a spot of razzle-dazzle: with a smile, a song and a dance. The result feels like the kind of show the creators wanted to write rather than the kind the story required.

The show’s lyricist Scott Wittman said that he was inspired by a picture of Frank Abignale Jnr dressed in a pilot’s uniform (one of his many cons) and surrounded by a gaggle of air hostesses. He took one look at those leggy flight attendants and saw in them the potential for a great high-kick chorus line.

Life as showbiz. But sometimes the con needs a better concept.

Hello to Any MusicalTalk Listeners

And thanks for the link, Thos.

In his latest MusicalTalk episode he interviews Paul Emelion Daly and the curious issue of singing accents comes up for discussion. Readers may be interested in this post on a similar topic Better Get Rid Of Your Accent? (with added Thos commentary).