Hello, My Name is Elder Price

In the space of a week I was lucky enough to see two plays in London's West End and they couldn't have been more different from one another. As explained in last week's post, Peter & Alice inspired in me such depth of thought regarding my own life. Book of Mormon on the other hand just allowed me to escape from my life for a couple of hours.

My relationship with comedy is an awkward one, because whilst I love a good laugh, I also rarely choose to watch comedies so it's up to someone else to suggest them. The lovely one always remarks that unless a film makes me cry I'm uninterested in watching it. That's entirely untrue. I just enjoy films with depth and meaning (and maybe a good dose of death). Whenever I attempt to watch comedy I prepare myself to be disappointed, because frankly, most of the time it's not that funny. Yes, it can be mildly amusing or quite funny, but it's rarely leaving me in floods of tears (I suppose maybe the litmus test for any entertainment is to bring me to tears, whether through sadness or laughter). 



As for the Book of Mormon, I was prepared to maybe like it a bit. I stopped watching South Park (Book of Mormon is by South Park creators Trey Stone and Matt Parker) before I left my teenage years, because the humour began to become lost on me. Yes, there had been rave reviews about Book of Mormon, but as with most things that become overly popular I was certain it would be overrated. 

My assessment: very, very funny. My flatmate Martyn warned me of the vulgarity before I saw it and so I was actually prepared to dislike it, because I was concerned it would be cheap humour. However, it was actually quite an intelligent critique of an organised religion who are intent on converting just about anyone. I don't want to overly complicate this review because the point is that my enjoyment of the play was quite uncomplicated. Quite simply, it was hilarious and I greatly enjoyed it. The story follows a pair of Mormons, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham, as they embark on their first assignment to baptise Ugandans in a remote village. Price is a dashingly handsome overachiever, whereas Cunningham is a short, overweight geek with a propensity for telling tales. The reality of the village differs very much from their expectations and the journey to convert the villagers is fraught with hilarity. To illustrate: the play involves sex with frogs, clitoris faces and a warlord with a name that involves a reference to buggery. 

Tickets are sold out months in advance, but it's worth the wait as far as I'm concerned. I'm not good at planning that far in advance, because I never know where I'm going to be in a few months, but I'm beginning to learn to settle in and really commit to a place for a time. Surprisingly, it's actually quite liberating and it's calming my mind. 

For a glimpse of The Book of Mormon view this clip from the Tony Awards' opening number by the cast:

Location: London, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Street Fight Aftermath

Image
I have been in hiding. I spent years on this blog revealing my truth, but then I became trapped. I somehow began to believe that I couldn’t share my reality anymore and that belief imprisoned me. It imprisoned me at a time when my mind had become a madman and was living to torture me. Haunted by the continuous splatter of sounds that were crunched, smashed, thrown together and weaved with a poisonous thread; a ricochet of memories, feelings, thoughts and voices. A downright cacophony of crazy.  Photo: Nicola Muirhead So, I shared. Six weeks ago, I took to social media and finally expressed how the last 18 months of my life had truly been in a post called “The Street Fight”:  “It’s been several months since I’ve posted. In the mental health narrative, we love stories of rebirth, renewal and redemption. We watch the phoenix burn and we are inspired when we see that phoenix rise from the ashes, but we rarely bear witness to what happens in between. Brene Brown calls
Read more

The Alphabet Years: A is where the adventure begins

Image
It’s 24 days into 2018 and I’m only now sharing my new year’s resolutions. I am, however, giving myself a pass because mine aren’t just for one year, they’re for 26. Since university, I haven’t planned my life more than a few months ahead. I thought I was a free spirit, but I now believe it was indicative of the opposite – one caged by fear. One that’s scared to plan and be disappointed; terrified to make goals, in case I miss the goalposts. The letter A is for... x While I had an incredible past year of achievements, I experienced something akin to daily stress fractures on my brain, which created fissures and cracks in my mind triggering mania and depression in rapid cycles. Now, I have chosen to unlock the cage: I’m committing myself fully to my creative endeavours all while travelling wherever this wild spirit finds itself drawn to, because that spirit was slowly dying. I was not in a good way. Now, here I am with the vastness of life stretched out before me. These e
Read more

Kintsugi and the Beauty in Broken Things

Image
'Hidden Damage'  Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering  There is a crack, a crack in everything  That's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen Kintsugi ("golden joinery" or "golden repair") is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold. It treats the breakage and repair of the item as part of its history, its journey, its existence. Rather than hiding the damage, it brightly illuminates the repair, inviting the world to see its improved beauty. Just like pottery, we humans can crack, splinter, break, shatter. These knocks remain part of our being and, whilst a brave face might create a temporary disguise, nobody can hide forever. At least I couldn't. To heal, I found I had to expose. Kintsugi treats the crack as merely an event in the life of the object, not a reason to end it. Kintsugi knows that something is more beautiful for having been broken. As someone who considers them
Read more