Good Review of "The Book of Mormon" Musical

[_Daniel Peterson]

So says the guy who was rubbing his hands together with glee over this forum getting shut down.

I'm not sure how that would be relevant here, even if it were true.

But, of course, it's not.

I'm serenely indifferent to the fate of this board. It neither bothered nor delighted me to see it down for a while.

There are some good people here, and some others -- yourself notably among them -- who are not.

If this board were to disappear, everybody here (unfortunately, including you) would find someplace else to post. So its vanishing would make little practical difference.

Does your obsession/agenda know no limits?

I presume that you spit your milk all over the computer screen when you'd written that line.

[_Doctor Scratch]

So says the guy who was rubbing his hands together with glee over this forum getting shut down.

I'm not sure how that would be relevant here, even if it were true.

It's relevant because, well, here you are. Still staking out your battlegrounds.

I'm serenely indifferent to the fate of this board. It neither bothered nor delighted me to see it down for a while.

Oh? Is that why you've repeatedly lifted quotes from here with zero attribution?

There are some good people here, and some others -- yourself notably among them -- who are not.

Keep picking at that scab, Dan.

If this board were to disappear, everybody here (unfortunately, including you) would find someplace else to post. So its vanishing would make little practical difference.

Is that really what you think?

Does your obsession/agenda know no limits?

I presume that you spit your milk all over the computer screen when you'd written that line.

I don't drink milk.

[_ludwigm]

You have paid for the review and don't want to see the item itself ...

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? ...

OK. I've misunderstand at first reading.

.

It was an FYI. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It was.

[_TrashcanMan79]

I don't drink milk.

(Moderator Note) Please, no image posting for now...based on the recent mess with SWG. Shades will be making some formal decisions regarding images in a few days.

[_Chap]

I'm happy to see you pulling back from your historically provincial assertion, am happy to concede that my resistance to your false claim played utterly no role in your doing so, and readily acknowledge that what certainly seems to people of my limited intellect and learning a patently simplistic bit of overblown secularist propaganda is, in fact, an unassailable truth in no need of nuance or qualification, whatever the actual "historical evidence" may pretend to demonstrate.

I haven't done a word-print analysis on this, but there is something about the prose here that makes me wonder whether there is a tiny possibility that Loran Blood/Coggins7/Droopy may be a long-term DCP sock puppet - the way he deals with the Dark Side, perhaps?

[_Joey]

The title of this thread, as with most of his, should have been: "I Need Attention"!

[_moksha]

The Tony Awards are June 12, 2011. So far the Book of Mormon has been nominated for more awards than any other play. The Book of Mormon has already won the best musical award from The New York Drama Critics Circle, the Outer Critics Circle, and the Drama League.

Let's here it for the Mormons!

by the way, the song I Am Africa is quite catchy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP3ewYwWy38&feature=related

This one is destined to be a favorite at the Missionary Training Center: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kq7RwI91UU&feature=related



You know, I bet there was a time when some Mormons despaired over whether their actions, in regard to Proposition 8, would bear any fruit and now this is just the tip of good things to come.

[_Daniel2]

I posted the following in Dan's other identical OP thread over at MDD:

Thanks for the review, Dan.

Kevin Williamson's review is, indeed, very well written--and though I disagree with the author's perception and opinion of the play, itself, he actually does a fairly good job of summarizing the plot.

It's fascinatingly ironic that as Mr. Williamson prefaces his review by disdainfully impling the play lacks "finely crafted plot" or any "living characters," he then goes on to describe what I would submit is a complex plot with multi-dimensional characters and a lot more heart than he's apparently able to discern, given the glasses of his paradigm--a paradigm that most Broadway-goers (not to mention the Tonys) obviously don't share, given the enormous popularity and critical acclaim the play is receiving.

Ah, well... that's the great thing about theatre, I suppose. Different things speak to different people. The play clearly will offend those with conservative leanings, LDS or otherwise. After all, as others have pointed out: the critical points the play makes about the imaginative-narratives that flows from well-intentioned, affirmingly life-changing, but less-than-accurate, religious "truths" are just as applicable to most religions, in general, rather than merely Mormonism.

Daniel2

[_Droopy]

Have you seen it?

I have not.

I haven't been in New York City since before its opening night.

But I've read innumerable reviews and innumerable articles about it, pro et con, and, anyhow, I know a good movie/music/book/theater review when I read one, even if, ultimately, I don't agree.

This is a good review.

I've long enjoyed Kramer and Kimball's critiques of contemporary American aesthetics, art, theater, and film, as well as other contributors to the New Criterion.

There has been a great deal of excellent writing there over the years, even though the magazine itself still seems to be rather inconspicuous.

[_Droopy]

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.

I recently picked up, in a small used bookstore somewhere I think, a copy of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London , about what Theodore Dalrymple has termed in a recent book, "life at the bottom,", only in this case, of French society.

I've not read much by Orwell outside of his serious political fiction and some of his social criticism, and frankly, wasn't aware that he had done such a large number of theatrical reviews. Sounds interesting, given his fine mind and perceptive observations of culture and human psychology.