During Liam Tobin’s first audition for The Book of Mormon, he didn’t even know the story. He just knew he wanted to be a part of the show.
It was in 2010, and Tobin was in New York City to audition for a different Broadway show, when he caught wind of the now-famous production by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
“There were rumours going around that the South Park guys are going to do a musical and there was a lot of buzz about it,” said Tobin, who was a Stone/Parker fan growing up in St. John’s, Nfld.
Tobin’s first taste of The Book of Mormon was “just a couple scenes, but already you could tell that they were really onto something … even though it wasn’t a fully formed thing for them, either, because they hadn’t even done the workshops at that point.”
When it opened the next year, “It kind of broke Broadway.”
For almost the past year, Tobin has played a leading role — missionary Kevin Price — in the current Book of Mormon North American tour, which comes to Regina next week.
“It’s such a dream role,” said Tobin, who lives in Stratford, Ont.
Stone and Parker co-wrote The Book of Mormon with Frozen and Avenue Q songwriter Robert Lopez.
The story is centred on two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: the successful and ambitious Elder Price, and “his opposite,” Elder Arnold Cunningham. (An elder is the introductory level of priesthood in the church.)
They are sent to Uganda, where “chaos and hilarity ensues,” said Tobin, and in their attempts to change the world, “it kind of turns out that the world changes them instead.”
As you might expect from the South Park and Avenue Q creators, “It’s quite profane, offensive, but it’s hilarious,” said Tobin.
A taste of that is in the production’s fourth song, “Hasa Diga Eebowai,” their welcome-to-Africa song that repeats the saying “Hasa Diga Eebowai” in a nod to The Lion King’s “Hakuna Matata.”
“Does it mean no worries for the rest of our days?” Elder Cunningham asks.
“Kind of!” is the reply from a character called Mafalamomor.
The upbeat and cheerful-sounding music goes on to accompany a blasphemous chorus and lyrics about the AIDS epidemic, drought, poverty and famine.
It’s crude, but the show also carries “a message of love and friendship and being open-minded and kind, whatever you believe in, as long as that’s helping people and making the world a better place,” said Tobin.
And, it’s based on a traditional Broadway show format.
“There’s also so many nods to previous classic Broadway shows like The Music Man or Wicked, The Lion King. So seasoned theatregoers will recognize those nods throughout the show as well,” said Tobin.
In an official catalogue about Book of Mormon, Parker, Stone and Lopez describe meeting in 2003 and long having admired each other’s work. During their first encounter, they realized each had an independent desire to make a project about the Book of Mormon.
“(Lopez) said, ‘I want to do something about Joseph Smith and Mormons,’” said Stone. “And we were like, ‘What? Wait a second. Nobody likes that stuff except for us, you know? Nobody.’ Only me and Trey have ever talked about that.”
“I wanted to do a show about religion that sort of got a huge amount of laughs on how ridiculous the stories were,” said Lopez.
The trio met intermittently in the following years, and began workshopping the show in 2008.
The Tony Award-winning Book of Mormon is in the midst of an international tour.
It runs in Regina at the Conexus Arts Centre Sept. 25-29.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
