Leo Schwartz’s musical is a high-concept mash-up parody of and tribute to The Book of Mormon and the classic raunchy theatre epitomized by Ethel Merman. The production directed by Bryan Adam, opened last week at Evolution Theatre Company and runs a little long but is full of screwball set pieces rife with plucky charm and can-do spirit.
The mash-up is a form that, at its best, uses a new context to make both strands of its DNA sparkle anew. More often, it pleasantly reminds us of what we liked about one or both of the sources without adding anything. While The Book of Merman never hits the heights of the former, it delivers the latter in spades. Two young Mormon missionaries, Elder Aaron Shumway (Nick Hardin) and Elder Jacob Braithwaite (T. Johnpaul Adams) discover, in a nondescript house on their mission, none other than stage and screen icon Ethel Merman (Gina Handy) living out her life in sweet obscurity. The twist is that Ethel Merman’s been dead since 1984.
Whether Merman has somehow faked her death and re-emerged as an ever-youthful version of herself akin to Elvis or Handy’s character is some immersive impersonator is both never explained beyond a riotous musical number (“Be a Merman”) and beyond the point. These young men grappling with the discouragement that comes hand in hand with believing in something, and their feelings for one another, find Ethel Merman because they need her. Rather, they need what she represented in most of those roles, a brassy, tough-love mentor to being yourself and living life with no regrets. Luckily for them and the audience, that’s what they get. Handy’s remarkable performance glows with strength, with energy, with a delicious raunchiness and sensuality, which never feels like a Merman impersonation but makes us believe she did eight shows a week in Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy.
Even better and more nuanced are the adorable missionaries. Hardin’s Aaron has his ambition to be on the stage reignited in the presence of one of the greats and Adams’ Jacob has to learn how to navigate that. The Book of Merman never treats the characters’ faith as a punchline, and it never treats the characters as a joke. Adams, in particular, plays Jacob with real nerve and intensity, his character has to be won over, but he’s aware of the world and his coming to grips with his innate desires is played as a process. Hardin, too, could easily be played as a lusty cartoon but gives Aaron a sweetness and lightness that wins the audience’s hearts. Best of all, the arc of the story doesn’t take the easy way out of casting everything aside when love rears its head. The characters deliberately don’t abandon their mission – there’s an undercurrent of fulfilling one’s responsibilities being a stone on the path to realization, not something mundane to be sloughed off on that road.
At their best, the songs walk a self-referential double entendre line and also leave us humming them on the way out, best for me were “If It’s Not Hard I Don’t Like It,” “My Heart’s Somewhere Else,” and big closer “Because of You.” More often, they’re direct references to classics associated with Merman as on “Most People, ” “You’re the Best” and “Everything’s Coming Up Merman.” I’m not sure how well the material will translate to someone who doesn’t already know the originals, but the audience at the Saturday performance I saw was in hysterics and the songs are all performed beautifully.
Bryan Adam’s double duty as director and scenic designer treats the material with the hand it deserves. The set is a very typical middle American living room, but it shows both an outside and an inside door. The doorway gets used as shield and metaphor in ways just at an angle of what I’ve seen before; it’s very subtle and very effective at grounding the action in reality underneath the extravagant songs.
The Book of Merman runs through July 30 with performances at 8 pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. For tickets and more info, visit evolutiontheatre.org.