Angel Moroni At My Table
THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEWS
by James Killough
Book of Mormon is all the rage. Every so often a musical opens that all of New York is rapturous about, but none that I would agree are actually rapture-worthy. I haven’t seen this production, nor have I listened to one note of a single song, yet I give it two thumbs and two large toes up. I wasn’t interested in Rent, although the Trey Stone and Matt Parker send up in Team America — I laughed so hard I farted during “Everybody has AIDS” — is one of my top ten favorite comedies of all time. I liked The Producers in the original 1968 movie with Zero Mostel and almost zero music; I watched half of the recent film version of the musical before I was overcome by homo self-loathing with the way Gheys were portrayed in that retarded, cliché-infested musical number about Gheys. But I would probably never tire of Book of Mormon.
The "Keep It Gay" sequence from "The Producers," film version. Barf. This is everything I detest about musicals summed up in one picture. As the drag queens used to say back in the 80s, "it's so tired, honey." Never even got out of bed for me.
Aside from the fact that Trey Stone and Matt Parker and I have the same raunchy, compassionately irreverent approach to “sensitive” issues…. Well, that’s it, actually. That’s the entirety of my affinity with them. There is no “aside.” The guys are genius, they deserve their success, may some of it float this way.
My evil twin Andrew Sullivan said after seeing Book of Mormon, “Religion is both insane and necessary at the same time.” At first I re-dubbed him my twit twin Andrew Sullivan until I had a good think about this statement.