The Book of Mormon

It was a mistake. Last Saturday, I ordered on line a ticket to The Book of Mormon, the long-running musical on Broadway, for the following day, Sunday.  To my delight, I was able to grab a prime seat, J-104, presumably a seat originally reserved as one of the so-called Director’s Circle but canceled or donated a day before — an unforeseen fortune, such luck.  The show received raving reviews; Ben Brantley of New York Times was ecstatic in his first review when it opened in 2011, and again more recently in 2014.  Indeed, the opening chorus of well-scrubbed Mormon boys is delightful; they sang vivaciously and danced deftly, and the music was joyful and up-lifting. After an half hour, however, my spirit sagged; I started to get bored.  By the end of the show, I was glad to run out of the theater.  My problem was that the high spirit, externalized in full-blast singing and dancing that was unremittingly insistent, lost its power quickly, like an oversaturated painting of blinding colors without shadows or tonal variations. The show, in short, shouted without respite. This may be the nature of the musical theater; it makes all the dramatic situations into a high festivity; in this regard, it is a genre that may be said to embody the kind of optimism that is peculiarly American.  Its energy is that of an all-night party of drinking, singing, and dancing, and shouting into one another’s ear for conversation, whose success is measured in the participant’s exhaustion.  On the other hand, I love Jerome Kern, Irviing Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Stephen Sondheim, and others; I am not averse to the genre itself.  So, I’m tempted to say that The Book of Mormon was seriously flawed in dramatic composition, or else, I proved myself a party-pooper. It was a blunder on my part to part with $210.25 in much anticipation.