Full Disclosure: Yes, I know shows are only considered "Broadway shows" when they take place on Broadway, but when you enter this realm as rarely as I do, you take what you can get.
For the past nine or so months, things have been a little hectic in our household. First there was the pregnancy bedrest. Then the two months in the hospital. Then, the, you know, baby. So not counting our once-a-month romantic outings to On the Border, my husband and I really haven't had a date since last July.
We broke out of that in style, by attending a production of The Book of Mormon at the Boston Opera House. This was really my first of this type of show, since I'm kind of a pain in the butt when it comes to musicals. I only really like them if they're cartoons or if they're comedies. I think it's because I have a problem suspending disbelief in a story that's supposed to be serious. How can it be serious if, right in the middle of conversation, 50 people appear and start dancing and singing in unison? At least in a cartoon and a comedy, things are already ridiculous so complicated dance numbers don't seem quite so out-of-place.
Which is why Book of Mormon seemed right in my wheelhouse. Co-written by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the guys who write South Park, it has all of the crude, inappropriate humor of...well, an episode of South Park. So of course I was game.
It was a Sunday matinee, which lent itself to some fine people watching. Traditional theater-goers to the Boston Opera House, a beautiful and ornate building in the theater district, were your typical crew - older, wealthier, wearing nicer clothes. We played along and wore nice clothes ourselves. But the fact that we were seeing a play written by the guys from South Park at 1 p.m. on a Sunday meant that the non-regulars were a mish-mash. I saw baseball caps next to ball gowns, jeans next to suits. The woman sitting next to me wore a Doctor Who dress over acid-wash jeans. I love it.
The show itself was fantastic. It had the right amount of over-the-top random humor (in one scene, a character with a tendency to let his imagination get away from him is repremanded by his father, Darth Vader, a couple of hobbits, and Yoda), but the storyline was equally funny. Basically, it follows two Mormon missionaries - the perfect Elder Smith and the bumbling compulsive liar Elder Cunningham - as they complete their service in a Ugandan village. They and the other missionaries struggle with convincing the natives to convert to Mormonism, since the natives are too concerned with things like poverty and famine and murderous warlords and AIDS. You know, typical comedy fodder.
Since it is not technically a trip to Boston without eating in the North End, we grabbed a gift certificate we probably got 5 Christmases ago and ate as al fresco as my perpetually cold body would allow (i.e. next to an open window).
When you have a baby, it's important to be able to step away, to make sure that you retain at least some semblance of the person you were before the baby was born. Our situation is compounded by the amount of challenges facing our boy. But you have to work at it because if you don't, you're just going to become miserable and resentful and that's no good. Maybe we won't go to a "Broadway" show EVERY month, but there's always On the Border.
