Although there is currently a thread about a bad review of the musical in the Celestial forum, I'm posting a link to this review here in the higher-traffic zone because I think it highly deserving of a look and some discussion. It is not the "typical" poor review often referenced by conservative Mormons (the play is offensive and bigoted), instead much of the negative critique falls on how the play presents its African characters and the racial politics of the show. But much more importantly Farmer places his entire review within a discussion of Mormon culture and both its historical and contemporary representation in American popular culture.
Jared Farmer is the author of a book I've mentioned here countless times, On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians and the American Landscape, a winner of several prestigious awards including the Francis Parkman Prize by The Society of American Historians. He grew up in Utah and whatever his current affiliation with regards to Mormonism is, has an excellent grasp of its history and culture.
I found his remarks on Mormon culture's own "pop" self-representation one of the best parts of the essay:
Mormons are ideal subjects for musical parody because they have their own homegrown traditions of musical theater. Not counting its uniformed missionaries, the most recognizable Mormon “product” in the religious marketplace is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (“MoTab”), which specializes in milquetoast Americana, including Broadway favorites. From the 1950s through the 1990s, Utah wards (congregations) staged summer “roadshows”—touring musical skits in church-wide competition. Today, Mormons are among the last Americans to preserve the once-popular tradition of community pageants.
The cheesiness parodied in The Book of Mormon is nothing compared the annual Miracle of Mormon Pageant in Manti, Utah, or the Hill Cumorah Pageant in Palmyra, New York. On a more professional level, the LDS Church’s film division (originally operated out of BYU) has produced hundreds of schmaltzy movies over the years. There is a distinctive heavy-handed theatricality about contemporary Mormon productions, a sensibility not too far from Rogers & Hammerstein. In many ways, including cuisine, Utah is a time capsule of mid-twentieth century American tastes.
He also discusses the musical in relation to the history of how Mormons have been portrayed in American culture: from the 19thC vilification "as foreign, deviant, dangerous, violent, secretive, conspiratorial, theocratic, repressive, despotic, anti-democratic, un-American, un-Christian fanatics who followed a false prophet, read phony scriptures, worshipped in strange buildings, lived in desert communes, grew long beards, and kept women in political and sexual oppression" to the late 20thC "[h]ighbrow appreciation of Mormon esoterica...with Harold Bloom’s The American Religion and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America."
He also catalogs and discusses the current "Mormon moment" in American pop culture and offers some ideas about how it may connect with a post 9/11 religious zeitgeist. His essay ranges in topics from the Reed Smoot senate hearings to Team America: World Police and offers a description of the musical that coincides with my own opinion of all Parker and Stone's work: "It wants to be transgressive and conventional, blasphemous and saccharine."
Farmer's final take on the musical chastises it for failing as satire:
Satire, like blasphemy, is not supposed to be crowd-pleasing entertainment. It is supposed to be discomfiting. Instead of inspiring religious debate, The Book of Mormon has mainly inspired a lot of self-admiration from pop culture mavens, people who evidently believe that singing Mormons and starving Africans are now retro-cool.
But, there is much, much more in the review and its interesting historical scope and attention to Mormon detail make it well worth reading.