How to go
What: “The Book of Mormon”
Where: Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati
When: March 29-April 3. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
Cost: $44 and up
More info: 513-621-2787 or www.cincinnatiarts.org
The popular musical satire “The Book of Mormon,” created by Robert Lopez and the “South Park” TV cartoon duo, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, is returning to the Aronoff Center on Tuesday.
When it debuted on Broadway five years ago, two general assumptions were made. One, that it would be yet another snarky, borderline mean-spirited takedown of an organized religion, and two, that the show would face an angry boycott from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), aka Mormons.
Neither assertion turned out that way, but some misconceptions linger even today, said J.R. Bruno, who has been with the show since its inception. Bruno started with it as a performer and now serves as the show’s dance captain.
To recap, “The Book of Mormon” is about two naive Mormon missionaries who travel to Uganda to proselytize but are quickly overwhelmed by culture shock, which takes the form of rampant famine, poverty, AIDS and warlord violence. The show went on to win nine Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
“Here and there, I’ll run into people who still think it’s a gratuitous show with no point,” he said. “We poke fun at a lot of things, and there are risque jokes, but it’s all for a good purpose. If you don’t stick around to the end, you’ll miss the whole point.”
Bruno theorized that because Parker and Stone had satirized Mormonism in the past, the “Book of Mormon” didn’t come as a great surprise to the LDS, and that it might explain why they took a different approach than simply denouncing the production.
“They have three ads in the program,” he said. “One of them says, ‘You’ve seen the musical, but the book is better.’ I think they saw it as free publicity.”
Bruno said Parker and Stone are still involved with the show.
“They and the producers have complete and final say whenever we have new people in the cast,” he said. “They still check on things. I just saw them in New York (a couple of weeks ago) in New York for the five-year anniversary.”
Outside of casting, Bruno said there have been no substantial changes to the show itself. He remembers his time with Parker and Stone fondly.
“The more you work with them, the more you realize how smart they are,” he said. “Whenever there was a problem, with the script or the score, you got to watch the brain at work. Trey would just pace back and forth until he figured it out.”
“The Book of Mormon” went on tour for the first time in 2012. Bruno said he had an inkling from the beginning that the show would be a hit in the New York world, but he wasn’t quite as optimistic when the show hit the road.
“I think Des Moines (Iowa) was the first obscure place we went to,” he said. “But on opening night, the crowd was going wild. That’s when we realized this thing plays everywhere. It was an exciting feeling.”
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