“The Book of Mormon” — which swept the 2011 Tony Awards with nine wins — arrives at the Fox Theatre on Tuesday and continues through Feb. 9.
Robert Lopez, one of the writers, says that the point of the show is not to make fun of Mormons.
“It’s just about telling a story about these two guys and about their religion,” Lopez said. It so happens that the church’s practice of pairing up young male elders to do two years of missionary service is a handy device for framing a tale.
In “Book of Mormon,” fresh-faced Elder Kevin Price (played by Mark Evans at the Fox) is packed off to Uganda with the socially challenged Elder Arnold Cunningham (Christopher John O’Neill). The elders’ attempts to convert the natives go wildly amok — and involve encounters with an angry warlord, a village chieftain and his nubile daughter. That leads to comic bedlam and, in the end, a kind of redemption, says AJC critic Wendell Brock.
For more, visit myajc.com.
