When Broadway Shows Resume, Should 'The Book of Mormon' Be One of Them?

(Joan Marcus)

Now before we get into weighing whether or not it should, let’s just make it clear that, barring any financial incapacity to do so, “The Book of Mormon” will be among the Broadway musicals resuming when Broadway shows are able to resume.

Over the show’s nearly 10-year run at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, it has become one of the most financially successful productions in New York not to mention its success abroad and on tour. “The Book of Mormon”(BOM) is one of the few Broadway musicals that can make the claim it’s printing money at this point.

There are also aspects connected to the show that are noteworthy. It won nine Tony Awards including one for Nikki M. James and Best Musical. It introduced Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells to the world. The musical also boasts impressive alumni including Matt Doyle, Nikki Renee Daniels, Rory O'Malley, Michael Potts, Ben Platt, and many more.

It also should be mentioned from a composition standpoint, the score is fantastic and among the very best in the past 20 years.

Now, having said all that, I agree with plenty of other people, by saying that the show is racist. That shouldn’t even be a question.

In response to the Black Lives Matter protests, the NYC theatre community is having conversations about the representation of black performers and what types of roles black performers are having to portray. And while the conversation about BOM has happened plenty of times before, it’s certainly been reignited now.

Let’s dig into the show a bit. I should also mention that there are spoilers listed for anyone who hasn’t seen the show.

While the show is satire, it’s absolutely fair to say it crosses the line when it comes to the depictions of its African characters.

As WSJ writer Susan Adell pointed out in September 2019,

“The Book of Mormon” is regularly described as hilarious, funny and even joyful. But for whom? The musical follows two young Mormons to a village in northern Uganda where they will serve two years as missionaries. There they meet a village doctor who sings about having maggots in his scrotum, a Ugandan warlord with an unprintable name who sings about raping black babies as a cure for AIDs and who threatens the village women with genital mutilation. This is heavy stuff, none of which I find funny.

I’ve seen the show twice, and over the course of the two viewings, my opinions changed a bit. Yes, the show is satirical but its satire is directed at the Mormon Church while the stereotypical depictions of the Ugandan characters are just stereotypical depictions.

To prove this, you could take the same story, move its location to another poor country, play up stereotypes of the people that live there and it wouldn’t change anything about the messaging in the show. BOM based in Laos? Same show. BOM based in Bolivia? Same show.

What made Uganda the necessary target for the BOM writing team was the fact that they could use our stereotypical views of poverty-stricken Africa to make it reasonable to depict the Ugandan characters in this way.

To be honest, Uganda shouldn’t probably have been a target of the show, to begin with. While the nation does have a tumultuous history when it comes to its political leadership and a terrible human rights record, much of what BOM lampoons isn’t true about the nation. According to reports, Uganda isn’t close to how it’s depicted in the show. It’s not among the top 10 poorest nations in Africa and it’s not in the top 10 when it comes to HIV/AIDS infection. It’s almost as if the creators of the show either picked Uganda over its troubled history, much of which was 20-30 years ago, or simply threw a dart at an African map to pick its destination.

The problem with this is that the show, in its worldwide performance runs, is perpetuating stereotypical depictions of an African nation and its people, that aren’t necessarily true now.

But while things like this should have been taken into more consideration, the creative team was more focused on the response from the Mormon Church.

In an interview with the LA Times, composer Robert Lopez(Avenue Q, Frozen) admitted that his concerns were with how the show would be received by Mormons.

“I thought it would be more controversial because the religious aspects, if taken out of context, might cause riots or whatever,” Lopez said. “We were aware religion is a subject with a lot of heat behind it.”

I understand why the creative team would feel this way. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a predominantly white organization, well-funded and based in the US where they could have threatened libel over the show. Uganda isn’t going to do that. So the creators weren’t going to worry about any issues from the African nation.

And before anyone says, “Where was this outrage before?”, it was always there, you just weren’t listening.

So what do we do about BOM now? It’s a complex answer that deserves a real discussion. However, it’s not a call we, non-black allies, should be making. It’s a call that black performers either cast in the show or auditioning for it, should make.

While I fully understand the outrage and newfound calls to leave the show closed, I also know that this is one of the most diverse shows on Broadway which is why it’s not my call to say this show should close. It’s one of the biggest employers of black talent in a theatre district that doesn’t have a great track record of long-running shows that employ black performers.

Something else we should consider is how cast members, both past and present, feel about performing in the show. Kimberly Exum, who was playing Nabulungi right before the shutdown, wrote a great piece for Broadway Black about what it’s like working in the show. I urge everyone to read it before picking up the proverbial pitchfork to cancel the show.

So I don’t know what the answer is when it comes to “The Book of Mormon”. But I know it’s not a call I should make. At the very least, I would hope that its producers Roger Berlind, Scott M. Delman, and (takes a breath) Scott Rudin, would commit to using their power, money, and influence to bring more material written by black writers and performed by black performers to Broadway stages.

That would certainly be a step forward rather than producing nearly all-white productions of “Hello Dolly!” and “The Music Man”.

But that’s another column.