musicals
The Book of Mormon Loves Musicals More Than You!
As everyone with a modicum of intelligence knows, musicals are the highest form of art. Nowhere is this more gleefully affirmed than in The Book of Mormon, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez’s audacious Broadway juggernaut. On the surface, it’s exactly what you might expect from the minds behind South Park: irreverent, blasphemous, and more than a little crude. Yet beneath the outrageous gags and taboo-poking humour lies a deeply affectionate celebration of the musical as an art form.
What makes The Book of Mormon remarkable is how fully it embraces, and even worships, the classic structures of musical theatre. Its opening number, “Hello,” is a pitch-perfect parody of the “welcome to our world” trope, while songs like “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” and “Turn It Off” directly echo Broadway traditions, from bombastic hero duets to tap-dancing showstoppers. Every number, no matter how shocking the lyrics, is staged with a knowing wink to the lineage of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, and even Disney. The satire may cut deep, but it is built on reverence.
The crude jokes, then, aren’t ends in themselves but tools to remind us of the enduring optimism and transformative power of the genre. Even when the story veers into absurdity, the characters remain grounded in that classic musical tradition: dreamers who believe, against all odds, that song and faith (whether in God, in friendship, or in storytelling itself) can change the world. In its final moments, when the missionaries find new meaning through myth-making, the show slyly suggests that belief and theatre share the same DNA: both demand a suspension of disbelief, and both, at their best, can give people hope.
Far from mocking the genre, The Book of Mormon exalts it. Its irreverence is a disguise for devotion, its vulgarity a counterpoint that makes its earnestness shine all the brighter. This is not just a comedy about religion, it is a love letter to musicals themselves, reminding us that no matter how cynical the world becomes, there is nothing quite as subversively powerful as a chorus line singing in perfect harmony
The Sound of Music
I love musicals. Most of my less evolved friends make fun of me for this. They undoubtedly associate musicals with sissiness and whimsy. Whereas I know the truth: music plus storytelling evokes emotions unable to be reached by the wittiest romcom or the explodingest thriller.
There is a simple explanation for this. Music, even in its simplest form, has the most direct line to our hearts. If you have a piano handy, I invite you to sit before it and play a C Major chord (C,E,G) You’ll hear a pleasant, perhaps strident sound. There’s no definitive emotion carried by this single noise, but if you change one note of the chord, if you drop the E by a semitone, the new chord will sound unmistakably sad. Anyone who has grown up hearing music played utilising the twelve golden notes of the chromatic scale will instantly understand that.
So, in one second, in fact in the moment between seconds music can convey a primal feeling more strongly than even the most touching monologue.
Quote: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.” – Roy Batty
With this weapon in your arsenal you can then skilfully craft the music to emphasise or foreshadow or reassure and you can almost guarantee your audience’s instinctive reaction.
Obviously, some musicals don’t work and that’s usually because the music is not in accord with the activity on stage then the discordant result might be worse than no music at all. The “Jukebox” musicals are dire (IMHO) because the action has been wrestled around a body of work that was never meant to be a cohesive whole. It might also be that the music and songs are merely bad. The writer cannot just bung a few songs into a play and claim his job is done. As with any artistic endeavour, it’s not that simple.
However, when it works, it really works.
There is a moment in the aptly titled “The Sound of Music” where Captain von Trapp is singing at the festival that I can barely even think about without squirting tears out over my computer screen.
He is a proud man and, as he attempts to sing the Austrian folk song “Edelweiss” to his fellow countrymen the full enormity of what is happening to the world, to his family and to himself settles onto his shoulders. He looks around the auditorium and sees people bowed or enthralled by fascism and for a second his strength and breath fail him.
His voice falters.
Maria, who has come to know and love him throughout the film, quickly steps forward and lends him her sweet voice and then ushers the children forward. Buoyed by the support of his family the proud Captain regains his strength and finishes the song to rapturous applause.
It’s simple, but it would not be as heart-wrenchingly beautiful without the music. If he was merely making a speech and Maria stepped in to help it would be easy to see him as weak. As it is, the music carries the message in harmony with the action and the film steps beyond its celluloid medium and into the realm of the exquisite.
My problem now, is how am I going to survive my daughter’s school production of this?