Friday, March 29, and Saturday, March 30
Adler Theatre, 136 East Third Street, Davenport IA
Enjoying a three-performance Adler Theatre run, the musical-comedy smash The Book of Mormon returns to Davenport on March 29 and 30, with Ben Brantley's 2011 New York Times review proclaiming, “I am here to report that a newborn, old-fashioned, pleasure-giving musical has arrived … the kind our grandparents told us left them walking on air, if not on water. So hie thee hence, nonbelievers (and believers, too), to The Book of Mormon, and feast upon its sweetness.”
Written by South Park Emmy winners Trey Stone and Matt Smith and Frozen Oscar winner Robert Lopez, The Book of Mormon is an irreverent, hysterical, and un expectedly endearing send-up of religion, culture shock, and classic musical theatre. The show finds two very different young LDS missionaries – the talented, eager Elder Price and the nerdy, pathologically lying Elder Cunningham – paired together and sent to Uganda to perform their two-year mission. To the missionaries’ disappointment, however, the local population seems to be more focused on the poverty, famine, the AIDS epidemic, as well as the despotic warlord in their midst, than they are in religion.
While Elder Price combats his own expectations and doubts and Elder Cunningham battles his inability to remember scripture or tell the truth, fellow missionary Elder McKinley crushes his homosexual urges, and the beautiful Ugandan Nabalungi fights to keep her hopes and dreams alive in the midst of great terror and uncertainty. Clearly, it will take a little inventiveness, a lot of teamwork, and perhaps an excommunication or two for the Elders to succeed in their mission.
Opening on Broadway on in March of 2011, The Book of Mormon was greeted with enormous fanfare and rapturous praise that soon led to 14 Tony Award nominations, with the show eventually receiving nine in categories including Best Musical, Best Direction, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Score. It also received Best Musical citations at the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Laurence Olivier Awards, in addition to a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. To date, The Book of Mormon has grossed more than $750 million, making it one of the most successful musicals of all time, and as of mid-February, it stands as the 12th longest-running Broadway show in history with more than 4,700 performances.
The nationally touring production of The Book of Mormon will be performed on March 29 at 8 p.m. and March 30 at 2 and 8 p.m., admission is $48-88, and tickets are available by calling (800)745-3000 and visiting AdlerTheatre.com.
