The Book of Mormon

 TNT

It couldn’t possibly live up to the hype but this irreverent Broadway hit musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the guys who created South Park) and Avenue Q’s Robert Lopez is fast, frequently foul-mouthed and lots of fun as the unlikely pairing of naïve Utah mission school graduates Elder Price and Elder Cunningham arrives in an AIDS-ridden Uganda – so different from The Lion King - to convert the natives.

Their colleagues have had zero success – not a single baptism between them - but when all-American golden boy Price cracks, geeky misfit Cunningham calls on his overactive imagination to add colour – and frogs – to the dull text of the Latter-Day Saints.

Filthy but rarely really offensive, the satire is soft and (despite a one-eyed war lord and the threat of female circumcision hanging over Alexia Khadime’s Nabulungi) there’s a feelgood atmosphere running right through.

The cast – including the local doctor with maggots in his scrotum – give it their all. Powerfully-voiced Americans Gavin Creel (well-cast as the fervent, square-jawed Price) and Jared Gertner (simultaneously endearing and annoying as dumpy sidekick Cunningham) are, intentionally, almost cartoonish whilst home-grown Stephen Ashfield’s Elder McKinley tries (but doesn’t quite succeed) in quashing his own homoerotic thoughts as he leads the clean-cut, well-drilled Elders in a nifty song and dance routine.

Not exactly ground-breaking after all, but a really good night out.

Prince of Wales , Coventry Street, W1D 6AS
Tube | Piccadilly Circus
Currently booking to 11th January 2014
£37.50 - £72.50 (+ premium seats £125.00)bookofmormonlondon.com