In the musical “The Book of Mormon,” Jesus called Elder Price a dick.

From the creators of the animated comedy “South Park” comes the equally vulgar “The Book of Mormon,” which was brought to Syracuse’s Landmark Theatre Thursday night and runs until Sunday as part of the Famous Artists Broadway Theater series.

The Tony and Grammy award-winning musical spans a series of events in which Mormon missionaries attempt to baptize a village of Ugandans.

For two and a half hours, the audience laughed in their seats at the seemingly righteous and naïve Mormon reformers who didn’t have a clue what they were doing for most of the musical, but always had one thing on their mind — their mission to baptize.

The audience was unfazed by racial references and sexual innuendos. It seemed like no one batted an eyelid when the “Chinese” were referred to as “yellow,” when Nabulungi, a girl from a Ugandan village, was described as a “hot shade of black… macchiato” or when the Mormon religion was saving the “holy clitoris” to the man who had “maggots in his scrotum.”

They play began when 10 white collared men neatly aligned on stage and tried to pass out the free book of Mormon as part of their missionary training. In pairs, these fledgling Mormon preachers were sent to a destination to convert “barbaric” people.

The play’s two protagonists, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham, a set of morons, are sent to emancipate the Ugandans. This task is “assigned” to them by the higher-ups at the Latter Day Saints’ Church.

Cunningham, the jabberwocky and official “liar” kept calling Price his “best friend” only to realize later in the musical that Price considered Cunningham as his sidekick. This tension between the two characters helped move the musical forward.

The Elders’ leave no stone unturned to make sure that they succeed, even if it meant modifying the sacred “Book of Mormon” and telling lies to keep Ugandans interested in baptism.

The most deceiving of Cunningham’s lies sets the ball rolling. He tells Ugandans that the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith “f*cked frogs” and is able to convince them that his religion can offer them salvation.

Even with the musical’s racy content, everything was taken in light humor. The stage settings changed quickly, from Lucifer’s hell to African countryside to a rock-concert with flashing neon light bulbs.

The lyrics and music varied. Some of them were upbeat and humorous, like when the Elders’ feet tapped, donning their bright magenta vests, clicking heels and singing happy odes to God and life. Other scores were more emotional, such as when a naïve Nabulungi sung a hope-filled soliloquy imagining Salt Lake City to be “a fairy tale place where a woman’s life has worth and where people have an open mind.”

The show did not belittle any one group — it poked fun at everyone. From the movie “The Lion King” to Nicki Minaj to the Lost Boys of Sudan, no subject was safe from its scrutiny.

“I was almost crying with laughter, and the man who sat next to me was laughing hard too,” said Deb Ricciardi, who works at NAC entertainment.

The turning point of the musical comes when the Elders decide go against the president of their mission to leave and instead stay to help the Ugandans fight off a warlord, even if it meant feeding them more lies about the Mormon faith.

“The Book of Mormon” comes full circle with a scene depicting the Ugandans’ going door to door, ringing bells and telling lies about “their religion.”

Jane Hass, a retired assistant retail manager, said the play was very “tongue in cheek.”

“I had come to the play knowing that some people might find it offensive,” Hass said. “I wish I could hear all the funny lines. I missed some as people were laughing so much.”

Published on October 24, 2014 at 1:31 pm

Contact Manmeet: mksahni@syr.edu