Correction: The role of Nabulungi was played in this performance by India Shelbi Boone. The Press regrets the error.
Unless you have an aunt named Mame, I wouldn’t translate “Hasa Diga Eebowai” for her. This peppy tune from oppressed Ugandan villagers shows up early in The Book of Mormon – Trey Stone, Matt Parker, and Robert Lopez’s multiple Tony Award-winning musical (2011) back in Houston thanks to Broadway at the Hobby.
The song, like the show, is profane, terrifically un-PC, lewd, raucously funny, and unfit for your maiden aunt. It fits the musical like a bespoke glove, albeit one made of ordure. The number is one-of-a-kind. The musical is one-of-a-kind. It is also glorious and not to be missed.
Stone and Parker are responsible for the iconic, irrepressible animated series South Park, a gonad kick to television satire if ever there was one. Lopez wrote the subversive Avenue Q. Need I say more? Mormon kicks you in the ass just as hard and is just as funny and even more outrageous.
Making fun of the Latter-day Saints is standard comedy fare, but this zany trio, abetted by lighting designer Brian MacDevitt, costumer Ann Roth, scenic designer Scott Pask, and whirligig choreography and whip-lash direction from original director Casey Nicholaw, is in a league of its own. The show holds no punches and throws them indiscriminately. Nothing is sacred – not AIDS, genital mutilation, poverty, dysentery, war lords, rape, religious fervor, or white boys acting foolishly. Everything gets screwed. If you’re prone to swoon at fucking frogs as a cure for AIDS, a kickline of clitorises and penises, an ultra-blond Jesus with a neon-edged robe, or fourth-grade bathroom humor, this is not the show for you. If you think of it as jacked-up Monty Python or an ultra-twisted Carol Burnett routine, then this show is right up your alley. Leave propriety behind and go for it.
This irreverent musical – some might say blasphemous – never fails to entertain, even when you might gasp at those moments when you think, “How did they get away with that?” or “Is this allowed on stage?” No, standards haven’t fallen. Mormon raises them.
The show is so over-the-top and salacious, we lap this up, stunned at the audaciousness of it all and surrendering completely to how competently the comics present such sensitivity without any trace of sensitivity, but plenty of Broadway know-how and pizazz.
Hey, but wait a minute, there’s a love plot in here, hidden not so secretly in a baptismal rite – read first-time sex – that softens the high jinks and brings this all back to Rogers & Hammerstein land. When nerdy geek Elder Cunningham (Diego Enrico, all curly mop and needy fantasist) and village beauty Nabalungi (Keke Nesbitt India Shelbi Boone) get it on, we’re in familiar Broadway musical territory. We root for their relationship, as silly as it is. Just as we know that Elder Price (Sam McLellan), egotist galore who wants nothing more than to spend his two-year mission at Disney World, will find redemption after his hallucinogenic “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream.” This is all sweet contentment, what Broadway musicals do best. Mormon does this with enough heart to counterbalance the profane. Although we crave the profane. Please, sir, may we have some more?
The Book of Mormon is an equal opportunity offender, no doubt about that. These Latter-day lambs are so clueless in their confrontation with the Third World that we just have to laugh. The Swiftian satire is wicked – oh, so wicked – and so juvenile that this classic show is most merry when it hits below the belt. Warn your aunt!
The Book of Mormon continues through January 12 at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday, and 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit houston.broadway.com. $60-$105.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
