Book of Mormon, Lyric Theatre sydney

Yeah, I'm late to this one - it's about to close in Sydney and it's a good year and a half since the Australian production first opened in Melbourne - but I had an afternoon off, it's about to leave Sydney and it was time I got around to it. I was already very familiar with the US cast recording (and have even bought a copy of the script), but it was time to see how this held up on stage, and is it worth the somewhat exorbitant prices? The answer is "pretty well" and ... "possibly".

There is a reason why this is an international hit - it's tuneful and wickedly funny, and the combination of Parker and Stone from "South Park" and Bobby Lopez from "Avenue Q" and "Frozen" turns out to be a great trio. Parker and Stone's fascination with Mormon theology (which has popped up both in their film "Orgazmo" and during "South Park") gets explored in a way that both points out the ludicrousness of the beliefs and the otherwise-good-intentions of the people involved in spreading them, and the songs and script give the most sensible attitude to the Africans that the Mormons are meant to be enlightening. If, yes, it's also full of fairly brutal honesty about the nature of both modern African culture and the nonsense of theology, it's remarkably willing to let pretty much everybody have a redemptive ending. Casey Nicolaw's production keeps things visually distinctive with bouncy choreography and fast flowing effective design which knows how to emphasise every gag and cut to the chase as quickly as possible.

If there's a problem, it's a problem common to a lot of long-running professional shows -this does feel just that little bit too glossy - there's no sense that there's anything really "live" in this show any more, that most of the cast is pretty much going through exactly the same motions they will be going through for months ahead. And I don't really get a sense of anything individual from any of the performers - everybody seems very stuck in a track which was set down by another performer years ago. And that makes this slightly less fun for me  -even as I'm aware it's the nature of the beast that this can't be varied that much, it does kill the "live"ness of a show just that little bit.

But as what this is, yes, it's indeed a very finely polished fun machine.