“Norman” Meets ​“Mormon”

I knew that a comedy about Mormonism could also shed thoughtful light on the basics of the religion — in a novel. But what about onstage? 

I brought that question to opening night Wednesday at the Shubert of the renewed run of The Book of Mormon, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s 2011 send-up of religious hucksterism with a musically pulsating scatalogical teenage heart. The musical — which ends its run on Sunday — just keeps on ringing and wringing great bellows of laughter from audiences, and is back at the Shubert for a run through Oct. 1.

I’ve just published a comic novel (called The Book of Norman) about Mormons and Jews in the battle for the afterlife. So I was advised by Various Authorities that I must leave the dwindling ranks of those who had not seen the musical, and see for myself how Mormon material can be mined in a similar vein onstage.

I expected to find musical full of fun, immaturity, and let-it-rip vulgarity at the Shubert. I’m pleased to report that I found all three.

The show is like a sophomoric college review with blazingly non‑P.C. (and potentially offensive to some) send-ups of Africans afflicted with AIDS and clitoral mutilation, missionaries afflicted with illogical obedience to the point of being utterly silly, and everyone else in sight — all plunked on a Broadway-level stage with enough whooshing fake smoke, dancing devils, and witty lyrics to pull a piety down with every song.

What makes it all more than a college review is a solid if simple dramatic superstructure: that great teenage conflict, a friendship. In this case, said friendship is forced upon two missionaries paired to do their work in war-torn Idi Amin-esque Uganda. One is handsome, suave, on-his-way-to-surely-convert-all-of-Africa Elder Price. The other is shlumpy, geeky, low-self esteem Elder Cunningham. The dramatic arc is built on how their friendship flip-flops. When Price sees the wisdom of Cunningham’s irreverent conversion techniques, the relationship lands in the right emotional place, and we all can be happy, like a sort of spiritual Sixteen Candles.

My not so hidden agenda, however, was to ask myself, like the insecure teenagers we all are at heart: What’s The Book of Mormon got that my Book of Norman doesn’t?

Mormon

I was assuming a musical, in its pursuit of being fast-paced and funny, would have little in it of substance about Mormon theology, practices, and history. I thought it would take the tools of an old-fashioned novel to move beyond mockery and give the much-maligned Mormon religion real and serious attention.

Well, I am happy to report again that you can learn a lot of basics about Mormonism from this jaunty show. Most of the parody dissects Mormon behavior. But when Elder Price, at his moment of crisis, breaks into his solo ​“I Believe,” we also learn about Mormon beliefs: ​“A Mormon just believes / that Jews built boats and sailed to America / I believe / In 1978 God changed his mind about black people / I believe ulun/ I believe God lives on [Plantet] Kolob / I believe.”

This might be Mormonism for Dummies. But the LDS Church’s responses have been to say gently that Mormons disagree with the simplicity of the depictions — but that they don’t formally or legally object. In fact, after initial performances and the huge popularity of the show, LDS officials took out ads in the shows’ playbills.

In effect, the Church wrote in its formal response that when Mormons see the show, they say: Yes, that’s my nose. I recognize it, but it’s a distorted, swollen nose.

And the musical is a send-up of the hucksterism of all religions that prey on people’s misery. When villager Nabulungi and her deeply afflicted people finally decide to convert, it’s because their physical conditions are so miserable: 80 percent of them are AIDS afflicted, and women suffer clitoral mutilations enforced by a woman-hating warlord. The only hymn they sing is one that culminates in giving the Middle Finger to the Almighty (caps my own).

And all they want is a ticket to ​“Salt Lake-A-City,” which they think happens if they convert. That’s a big plot point, because the tickets don’t come along with the baptism. The way the musical ends (spoilers ahead), the Africans accept the weirdly distorted, Star Wars and Hobbit-inflected Book of Mormon Elder Arnold Cunningham teaches. They stay in Africa, and are seen at show’s end happily doing their own missionary work themselves, knocking on African doors.

But the religion the new missionaries are trumpeting is not quite the same. This new faith is based on a red book they hold up for all the audience to see: ​“The Book of Arnold.”

Do they believe it? Or have the converts learned from the American hucksters of religion only how to market a faith, a commercial — not a spiritual revelation?

The musical’s conviction is that no faith is going to solve the earth’s problems. As one of the villagers points out, no matter what he believes, he still has maggots in his scrotum.

Norman

My Jewish brother became a Mormon in his 20s. That became the autobiographical trigger for my new novel ​”The Book of Norman” . It took me years to get beyond a reaction fueled by easy depictions of the Mormons, such as the musical feeds on, and ask myself what about Mormonism appealed to my brother in a deeper way.

In my book, I tried to answer the question of why one would accept the weird architecture of Mormonism, with people in science-fiction fashion flying back to Planet Kolob to be gods in their own right. My character adopts Mormonism not out of extreme material need, but out of another kind of pain. I think it’s the pain of not knowing.

The Mormon religious genius — beyond the American genius of marketing faith as product — is to have taken that Puritan heaven of a shining city on a hill and turned it into a heaven-opolis, with all kinds of levels and condos and penthouses, and make it a place where you can reside with everyone you love, forever and forever.

For my beloved Jews, the picture has never been very good or specific about the afterlife. When there’s a deep question — what is going to happen to me after I die? — a reading list, very often a Jewish answer, isn’t often going to do the trick. (That scene is in the book, not in the musical.)

The Shubert’s offering of the Book of Mormon’s national tour is unfailingly energetic, with each number practically a show-stopper. My hope is my brother will read and like my novel and then we will go see the musical, at its next return to the Shubert — for I’m sure it will be coming back forever and forever — and we will enjoy it and laugh together.

The Book of Mormon runs at the Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., through Oct. 1. Click here for tickets and more information.