Good Review of "The Book of Mormon" Musical

[Guest]

Mr. Peterson,

My wife and I LOVED this play. I would highly recommend it. It's interesting that pro-LDS works like "Johnny Lingo" and "Saturday's Warrior" have caused real and long lasting damage to the Church, but a play like "The Book of Mormon" could actually have some benefit.

In my opinion, this play wasn't really about the LDS Church, but about the almost unbearable brand of optimism Americans tend to want to impose on the rest of the world.

“The Book of Mormon” expresses a comedic contempt for that type of optimism and innocence. The main focus of the play, and where it spends the majority of time making fun at, is blind faith, which the play observes, knows no religious bounds.

I give "The Book of Mormon" 4 stars and it deserves its 14 Tony (edited) Nominations.

[_Baker]

Mr. Peterson,

My wife and I LOVED this play. I would highly recommend it. It's interesting that pro-LDS works like "Johnny Lingo" and "Saturday's Warrior" have caused real and long lasting damage to the Church, but a play like "The Book of Mormon" could actually have some benefit.

In my opinion, this play wasn't really about the LDS Church, but about the almost unbearable brand of optimism Americans tend to want to impose on the rest of the world.

“The Book of Mormon” expresses a comedic contempt for that type of optimism and innocence. The main focus of the play, and where it spends the majority of time making fun at, is blind faith, which the play observes, knows no religious bounds.

I give "The Book of Mormon" 4 stars and it deserves its 11 Emmy Nominations.

I agree that it was awesome and mostly with the above. 14 Tony nominations is not too shabby ...

I don't know what the point of the op is - kind of stupid to comment on the content of a review of a play one hasn't seen ...

[_Doctor Scratch]

I don't know what the point of the op is - kind of stupid to comment on the content of a review of a play one hasn't seen ...

It's because DCP wants to sound smart and cultured while at the same time taking a pot-shot at the musical (which, as you rightly point out, he hasn't seen). I'm sure that he is really sorely wanting to take the musical down a peg or two in light of the critical acclaim it's received, along with all those Tony nominations you mentioned. He's probably really steamed about that. Nothing angers a Mopologist more than the thought of an "anti" work being successful. (Dr. Peterson really hated Big Love, too.)

The funny thing is that a good deal of the criticism in the linked review could easily and aptly be applied to stuff that's appeared in the FARMS Review.

[Guest]

Mr. Peterson,

My wife and I LOVED this play. I would highly recommend it. It's interesting that pro-LDS works like "Johnny Lingo" and "Saturday's Warrior" have caused real and long lasting damage to the Church, but a play like "The Book of Mormon" could actually have some benefit.

In my opinion, this play wasn't really about the LDS Church, but about the almost unbearable brand of optimism Americans tend to want to impose on the rest of the world.

“The Book of Mormon” expresses a comedic contempt for that type of optimism and innocence. The main focus of the play, and where it spends the majority of time making fun at, is blind faith, which the play observes, knows no religious bounds.

I give "The Book of Mormon" 4 stars and it deserves its 14 Tony (edited) Nominations.

Faithful Mormons are their own worst enemies. Inevitably the sincerely expressed convictions of yesterday become the cringe-worthy moments of today and need apologetic massaging.

[_Morley]

I'm confused. You're providing a link (and little commentary) to an article that most of us cannot read? I don't get it.

You now know that it's out there, and how to get access to it if you desire. That's called information, and it isn't, I think, especially confusing.

I disagree. A link to a pay-to-read review, and a very brief comment about it, isn't information. A summary of the review might be information, but you didn't provide that. The confusion is to why you didn't provide much of anything other than it's quite "negative."

I think the topic is a great one. I want to read your argument--an argument other than pay to read the review then we can talk about it. Or am I misreading what you're saying?

[_Daniel Peterson]

You're being pretty stingy with the details, Dr. Peterson. Based on what you've said here, it seems like the main criterion for judging it "a good review" is simply that it was "quite negative" towards a musical that makes fun of Mormonism.

That would, of course, be the predictably negative way in which you would inevitably try to read my remarks.

The review is available for those who wish to read it. They can judge for themselves. Or not. As they choose. I simply called it to the attention of people here.

Is there, in our round world (I think this is something default...) who pays for a review of a performance he/she can not or doesn't want watch?

I don't know Hungarian, and cannot say.

You have paid for the review and don't want to see the item itself (imagine a personal attack - self censored here...)

I paid for the review in the sense that I am a long-time subscriber, since its founding more than a decade ago, to The New Criterion. I simply came across the review while going through magazines that had arrived at my house while I was out of the country for six weeks.

And where, precisely, did I say that I didn't want (or, at least, intend) to see the play itself? I saw Angels in America in New York City, during a summer in Princeton. If I had any immediate plans to go to New York City again, I would very possibly see The Book of Mormon there. (I married a drama major, after all. We always cram in as many plays as we can.) But I have no such plans, and, frankly, hope to do relatively little traveling in the immediate future. (Of the past eight weeks, I've spent one in Utah, one in Florida, and six moving back and forth between Europe and the Middle East. Enough is enough, for at least a while.)

I don't know what the point of the op is - kind of stupid to comment on the content of a review of a play one hasn't seen ...

I just finished reading a marvelous volume of George Orwell's literary and theater reviews, almost entirely devoted to items that I have not read or seen. They were worth publishing and worth reading. And similar volumes have been published from many authors and critics over the past two or three centuries, which are also well worth reading, even if, as is often the case, one is unfamiliar with the (often now quite obscure) pieces they were discussing.

That you think such reading is "kind of stupid" is a not too interesting factoid about yourself, but of little significance otherwise.

A link to a pay-to-read review, and a very brief comment about it, isn't information.

It is information. Unless, of course, one is working with an idiosyncratic definition of the word information.

It was an FYI. I pointed out that there is a good review of the play in the May issue of The New Criterion, a fine journal to which I subscribe, and to which at least two of my friends independently subscribe, and to which perhaps somebody here also subscribes, and which can also be accessed on line for a fee, and which is, in any case, very possibly in the collection at your local public or college library.

If you don't want to be alerted to such things, just ignore mention of them.

I want to read your argument

What "argument"?

It was an FYI. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[_Doctor Scratch]

You're being pretty stingy with the details, Dr. Peterson. Based on what you've said here, it seems like the main criterion for judging it "a good review" is simply that it was "quite negative" towards a musical that makes fun of Mormonism.

That would, of course, be the predictably negative way in which you would inevitably try to read my remarks.

No, it's a predictably reasonable way to interpret your remarks. How hard would it be for you to type out a sentence or two explaining why you found it to be a "good review"?

[_malaise]

"Self-expression," which may or may not be the supreme artistic value, has co-existed with conceptions of blasphemy and good manners for many centuries. I do not believe that it was invented rece.

And people have been complaining about the effect of manners and speech codes on the ability of people to express themselves for much of human history. Read your Rousseau.

[_Buffalo]

Now that Dr. Peterson is back, I can really see where Wade has gotten his posting style from.

[_Daniel Peterson]

And people have been complaining about the effect of manners and speech codes on the ability of people to express themselves for much of human history.

Read your Rousseau.

I've been reading Rousseau for decades. (With less and less admiration.) His is an idiosyncratic eighteenth-century French Romantic voice.

I would, genuinely, enjoy seeing examples of such complaints from Babylonia, Egypt, classical Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the medieval West, classical China, pre-modern Japan, and classical Islam.