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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to the Sound of Musicals. 欢迎回来【曲外之音】. Hi, Oliver.

Hello again.

Now this time again, I am going to propose a musical, one of my favorites, one of my old time favorites.

What exactly are we going to talk about today? Which one is your favorite?

I think we talked about this before and this is absolutely one of the perhaps more controversial ones. This is the Book of Mormon.

I've heard of it. Yes.

中文翻译叫《摩门之书》或者《摩门经》.

I'm sure some of our audience have heard of it and some of you probably have even watched it. I mean, I have watched it in the West End. I actually have seen it live.

Nice.

It was one of the best theatre experiences I ever had.

*西区 The West End of London

是19世纪的英国人用来指代伦敦查令十字以西的商业和剧院聚集区的名词。在西区中心盘踞着大大小小40个剧院，伦敦人直白的称呼这篇区域为Theatreland

Fantastic. I do really want to. I haven't seen it myself, but I have listened to some of the songs and I really want to go and see this one. This is a good one.

But before we get into it, remember, I said it's hugely controversial for many reasons and you will get to know as we start talking about it. But first of all, a reminder, this is not for the faint-hearted. If you are very uptight, if you get easily offended, perhaps stop listening to this.

Yeah, this one… it's very easy to get offended by if you have certain views. So listen with caution.

Let's jump right into it. Since I proposed it, so I'm gonna just very quickly gave a background. So the Book of Mormon, you know that this musical is actually created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the brilliant minds behind South Park.

South Park, yes. Again, another controversial thing. It seems to be there their cornerstone.

*South Park《南方公园》

是1997年由特雷帕克和马特斯通制作的动画，至今已经有25季。《南方公园》虽然是一个卡通片，但它是拍给成年人看的，反过来又用了孩子作为主角，经常通过嫉妒夸张的模仿与巨大的脑洞，来讽刺、映射美国文化和社会问题。

Do you like South Park?

I do. I like the controversy but more so I like the fairness. People get offended by South Park because of what it talks about. But I think it's completely fair because it makes fun of everything.

Everyone.

Nothing, nothing is off limits, no one is out of bounds. And I think that just makes it a good comedy because you know what you're going to get and everybody gets the same.

The Book of Mormon它是由写南方公园的这两个人写的, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. So I always tell people if you want to know if you would like the Book of Mormon, watch South Park first. South Park has a lot of music bits as well.

It does.

If you can get on board with those then you definitely have no problem with the Book of Mormon, you would be able to appreciate it. If you find those really offensive, really dirty, then don't go and see the Book of Mormon because you are going to be in for a shock.

It is really out there, both of them, the show South Park and the musical the Book of Mormon are really out there in the comedy and the sense of humor that they have and show.

So first things first, why is it called the Book of Mormon? There is actually a thing, the Book of Mormon is a real thing, it's also obviously the name of this musical, it’s about Mormons or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 摩门教可能有很多人听说过.

By the way, Oliver, have you ever heard of the Mormon Church?

I have, yes. I've met a few of them once before, very polite people, the group I met anyway, the family I met were very polite. But we don't have, there's not a huge following of the Mormon Church or the Latter-day Saints in the UK. It’s much more centered in the US.

Yeah, but even in the US they're not like… they’re minority, anyway.

No, they are in minority, but they do have a larger presence in the US than in the UK. It's a very small group in the UK.

On the surface, it looks like this musical is making fun of the Mormon Church, because it's centered around these characters they’re all Mormons.

Since you suggested this one and it is one of your favorites, why don't you give us our brief overview for this show?

This is going to be difficult.

It always is difficult.

It's a long story and there are some really controversial parts, but let me try. I'm just gonna make it as brief as possible because obviously if you're interested in it, you gonna watch it anyways.

So the Book of Mormon, the musical follows, like I said, people from the Mormon Church, particularly two missionaries, 两个“新出炉”的传教士, they're very young. Like you said, Mormons are known to be they're very well-meaning. They're not like nasty people. They have their beliefs. You might not agree with them, but they are generally known as being quite well-meaning and quite polite.

What they want to do is they obviously want to spread their faith. They want to go around the world and tell other people about their Mormon Church and what they believe in. So their mission is to go around the world and spread what they believe in and try to convince other people to join them to join their Church.

So two guys going to, where do they go in the end? Where do they get sent?

This is the funny part, because they are assigned to different countries. So these two guys, one is called Price, the other is called Cunningham. Price is one of these, up-and-coming, really driven young men, quite well respected in his Church. But Cunningham is basically quite useless. So he follows Price around. They wanted to be assigned to an exotic location. They want to go to these fascinating places, but in the end, they were assigned to go to Uganda, 乌干达, probably one of the least developed places in the world.

Yes, definitely not what they were hoping for, I'm sure.

Yeah. But the thing is they didn't know anything about Uganda. They knew it's in Africa, but they knew nothing. But the thing is people they were poverty-stricken, there's rampant HIV/AIDS, there's famine, there's female genital mutilation, there's warlord. So lots of things are going on.

Yeah, that is true in some parts of Uganda today. These are real issues talked about in this show.

Yeah. But can you imagine these two young and wide-eyed American boys, they have never been to Africa and they’re dreaming about spreading their faith to people in exotic locations, they were sent to this really realistic, basically really poverty-stricken African village in Uganda.

And the long and short of it, they were there and then they started by being very naive approaching these people, the local people, the village head and also his daughter. And then they were trying to convince them that how they should believe in their religion, in the Mormon faith. And these people obviously were so busy trying to survive.

I imagine they weren't so interested in any new religion right now when they have all of those other problems going on.

Exactly. Not only that, later on when we were talking about the music in part two you will see, they actually do not have any faith. They actually don't believe because if there is a God, why would this God let so many bad things happen? Why are they alive in a living hell?

I know it sounds really… it doesn't sound like a fun show.

It doesn't right now, no.

No. Okay. So again lots of details, but then Price this one who's very, very driven, and he eventually just gave up. He feel like, okay, I cannot get to the people here. I cannot really convince them. So he abandoned Cunningham, the useless missionary; but then Cunningham, interestingly, because he still needed to do his work. He started when he's telling the local people about his faith. Originally, he's supposed to tell them about his Mormon faith, but because he isn't very good. So he couldn't remember a lot of it. So instead of telling them word by word from the Book of Mormon, he's inventing things, he's putting in things he's learned from science fiction, from fantasy novels and movies.

Yeah, I think there's references to Star trek, Star Wars as well. Lots of sci-fi stuff.

He's like a typical nerd, so he's telling them all about these nerd knowledge. But the thing is obviously because the local people didn't really have anything else to reference. So they sort of just listened to him and believed in what he said or he thought they believed in him. Just eventually it just the story unfolds lots of details. Eventually he comes to the realization that the local people they wanted to believe in something, but it's not necessarily a specific religion, like Mormon or anything else for that matter, but really is to have hope in life and to find salvation. So that is basically the main idea of the story.

So the idea is, it's not religion specifically, it's the message, it's trying to show and convey.

Yeah, and then so towards the end, these people remember the boys they set off to spread the Book of Mormon, towards the end, the locals in Uganda, they found their faith and they were going around spreading the words from the Book of Arnold, Arnold Cunningham.

No Mormons there, but just Arnold.

Yeah, Arnold Cunningham. So one of the main characters, yeah.

It sounds like a very heavy story, but because there are so many fun parts, I think this is really what the South Park guys, the South Park creators what they're good at. They talk about a lot of very, very in depths and very dark, very heavy topics, subjects, but they make light of it, but not in a way that they are saying these are not important, but they make fun of it to make you see how absolutely ridiculous and absurd some things are.

Yes, that is something I saw in this show and in South Park, the TV show. They don't try to be offensive, they're not anti-anything. They just want people to realize this is a problem, but maybe it doesn't need to be a problem. If you look at it like this or things like that, they use comedy as a way to get people to think more about situations and problems.

And this show opened in 2011. And despite us saying it's really controversial, it might offend people, it actually received overwhelmingly positive critical responses. And it has already got multiple Tony awards including best musical, and also a Grammy award for best musical theater album.

Fantastic. I have to ask one question here, about controversy. How did the Mormon Church or Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints respond to this musical? What did they say about it?

You would think they wouldn't have be able to take the joke, right? Because the entire musical really, on the surface, it is kind of like making fun of them, making fun of their religion.

Yeah.

So this is how they responded initially. They just responded indifferently, they didn't show any specific response. However later on as the show became really popular, get this. The Mormon Church actually purchased advertising space in its playbill.

They used the show as advertising for their Church.

Exactly. I find that to be hilarious, it’s kind of like…

That is fantastic.

If we can't beat them, join them, sort of thing.

Yeah, join them. That is a fantastic thing.

OK. I think that's the basic of the show, and I can't wait for part two discussion when we get into the themes of it and we also especially get into the music of it.

The music is great.

Alright, on that note, if you have listened or watched the show, leave us comment in the comment section, how you feel about it? Do you think it's too controversial? Is it too offensive? Leave us comment.

Thank you, Oliver, for coming to the show.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to the next one.

We'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye.