Friday, 19 August 2016

Musical Review - The Book of Mormon (West End Production)


About the Show: 

The Book of Mormon is a religious satire musical with book, lyrics, and music by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone. Best known for creating the animated comedy South Park, Parker and Stone co-created the music with Lopez, the co-composer/co-lyricist of Avenue Q, and, subsequently, Frozen. The Book of Mormon follows two Mormon missionaries as they attempt to share their scriptures with the inhabitants of a remote Ugandan village. The earnest young men are challenged by the locals' lack of interest, occupied as they are by more pressing troubles such as AIDS, famine, and oppression from a warlord.
Development on the musical began in 2003, with the trio meeting sporadically to work on the musical for several years after Parker and Stone saw Avenue Q. Parker and Stone grew up in Colorado, and references to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been commonplace in their previous works. For research, the trio took a trip to Salt Lake City to meet with current and former Mormon missionaries. Developmental workshops were staged beginning in 2008. The show's producer, Scott Rudin, opted to open the show directly on Broadway. The LDS Church issued a polite, measured response to the musical, and purchased advertising space in its playbill in later runs.
After nearly seven years of development, the show opened on Broadway in March 2011. The Book of Mormon garnered overwhelmingly positive critical response, and set records in ticket sales for the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. The show was awarded nine Tony Awards, one of which was for Best Musical, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. The original Broadway cast recording became the highest-charting Broadway cast album in over four decades, reaching number three on the Billboard charts. The musical premiered in the West End in 2013, and has staged two national tours.


My opinion:

I’ve wanted to see The Book of Mormon for a while and now I finally have!!!

I was so excited to see this show! It starts with being outside the Prine of Wales theatre, it looks so pretty. We had seats in the forth row, that was perfect and we were really able to see the expressions on the actors faces. That was actually really important to me, but I will explain later on.

The starts of this show with the song „Hello“ is awesome!!! The mormon elders knock on doors, say hello and actually want to convince people to join them. First it’s only Elder Price singing, but more and more oft hem joining and it’s so much fun to watch them. Their expressions are on point and they are all very different, which is so much fun.

Elder Price then goes on a mission in Uganda with Elder Cunningham and he is rather special. Their adventure starts and together with the other elders they try to convince the population to become Mormons. However, that is not so easy. Following this are some very funny scenes, exciting songs, but also a gripping story. It was amazing to see the mixture between rock/pop songs and the African influence.

KJ Hippensteel as Elder Price was brilliant! He has an amazing voice, great mimics and his acting was on point. David O’Reilly was fabulous and I think he fit the role perfectly. He was hilarous!! Alexandra Ncube made a wonderful Nabulungi, or shall we call her „Netflix“?! ;) I really liked the other elders as well, the formed a fab group and all of them had amazing stage presence. Their songs were so much fun and great to watch. The whole cast builds a brilliant picture and the Ugandian „people“ on stage brought a lot of happiness and colours into it.

This show is AWESOME on so many levels:

-       Brilliant and clever story, with lots of hilarious elements in it
-       Awesome, catchy songs
-       Amazing cast
-       Actors and actresses with a great stage presence and amazing acting/expressions
-       Great dancing
-       A mixture of all kinds of musical styles
-       and more…

I would definitely go see this show again, I LOVED every second of it!

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