Sacred and profane

This weekend J and I went to see The Book of Mormon at the Boston Opera House. The only thing I knew about the show beforehand was that it was written by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, so I fully expected it to be foul-mouthed, irreverent, and funny. What I didn’t expect, however, was for this zany story of young Mormon missionaries proselytizing in rural Uganda to be sweet.

Stone and Parker get away with lampooning Mormonism and offering a cartoonish caricature of Ugandan village life because the characters they create are essentially likable. Mormon missionaries Cunningham and Price are young, idealistic, and naive…but so is Nabulungi, the young Ugandan woman who is the first to accept a particularly warped version of traditional Mormon teaching. The degree to which Elders Cunningham and Price have been sheltered from anything but First World Problems is apparent the moment they arrive in Africa, and they never entirely lose their cluelessness, with one running gag focusing on Elder Cunningham’s complete inability to remember Nabulungi’s name even though he’s clearly smitten with her. The Book of Mormon lambasts Cunningham and Price for their naivety, but the audience can’t help but root for them.

When faced with trouble, people can either curse or bless God, and The Book of Mormon demonstrates both approaches. One toe-tapping, wildly NSFW musical number, for instance, features the Ugandan villagers teaching the visiting Mormons a phrase they utter whenever things go bad, and while the missionaries assume the phrase means “No worries,” it turns out to be pointedly blasphemous instead. Both Cunningham and Price try to convince the villagers to find solace in God, but this approach falls flat when the previously-pious Price has an epic crisis of faith the first time he faces true hardship. Initially, the missionaries’ message falls on deaf ears because its otherworldly idealism is so far removed from the harsh realities of life.

But because The Book of Mormon is a comedy, it cannot end with existential dread. Although Cunningham, Price, and their fellow missionaries travel to Africa with the intention of teaching the villagers there, of course they end up learning more than they’d anticipated. Mormons, it turns out, believe a lot of crazy things…but so do Christians, Muslims, Jews, and optimists of all sorts. The Book of Mormon is a sweetly uplifting story–despite more than two hours of irreverent humor, crude jokes, and obscene language–because it suggests the metaphors underpinning religious faith are ultimately helpful and worthwhile if they lead ordinary people to treat one another more kindly.

I don’t know if God has a sense of humor, but if he does, I’m guessing he’d approve that message.