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Mickey-Jo saw three iconic musicals in SPANISH! | reviews of Los Miserables, Wicked & The Book of Mormon in Madrid
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Micky Jo
Back at the beginning of this year I decided it would be a great idea to fly from London to Madrid, Spain and see back to back musicals in Spanish in spite of the fact that I do not speak it. We are talking the Book of Mormon El Musical. We are talking Wicked El Musical and we are talking Los Miserables. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel or hello to those of you listening to this on podcast platforms. If you are meeting me for the first time, bienvenidos. My name is Micky Jo and I am a professional full time theatre critic and content creator here on social media. I travel around the world in pursuit of the very best theatre that I can find and I had no idea that when I went for the first time to see shows in Madrid that I would discover that the theatre district there was so much more prolific than I had realized. So many more theaters probably after the West End it is the largest theater district in Europe and deserves to be talked about an awful lot more. And if you have any recommendations either for myself or anyone else who happens to be perusing the comments section about upcoming shows, plays or musicals in Madrid or in the rest of Spain. Over the coming months, I would love to go back and see some more things, particularly some Spanish original shows. In the meantime though, there is plenty for us to discuss. We are going to talk about standout performances. We are going to talk about design changes. We are going to talk about curiosities within the translations of these shows. If you enjoy and you would like to hear more of my reviews, make sure to subscribe here on YouTube or follow me on podcast platforms. I already shared and extended review of the production of Cabaret that I saw in Madrid. You can go and check out that one. For now, though, there are three other shows for us to discuss, starting with the first that I saw, Los Miserables. So Los Miserables, or Los Miz as I'm going to affectionately refer to it, is unlike the other two shows that I'm going to discuss, not a non replica production created in Spain. This is the 25th anniversary staging of the show which has toured various different countries. It was first seen in 2009 for the show's anniversary, where it originated as a UK touring production. It has subsequently been implemented at the Sondheim Theatre in the West End and is now the West End version of Les Mis. It has also played on Broadway tour to the us and now it is the production which is playing in Spain with one significant difference, a little logistical curiosity which has to do with the shape of the theater itself. And if you stand outside of this building you can see that on the left hand side as you look at, there is a road running down the side and you can tell that there isn't that much space on what would be the stage right side of the stage. And it transpires they don't have an awful lot of wing space on that side of the stage. All of the space that they do have is on the other side. So not only have they built this little atmospheric walkway where you can see performers walking off into the distance, they also keep the majority of the larger set pieces on stage left. Which means that this production is on several occasions throughout the show mirrored to the production that you would currently see in London. They have to bring Fantine's bed on from one side. They have to bring the entire house for Rue Plumet and the gate on from the other side. So if you have seen this production a lot, then you might experience a little bit of whiplash. It reminded me on occasion of when you would play the 150cc mirror versions of Mario Kart races, if that means anything to anyone. And there's, like, a degree of familiarity, but also everything is just on the wrong side and it's a little confusing to the brain. Dramatically, though it doesn't particularly have any implications for the plot, especially because for the most part, when people sing these huge epic songs in the score of Los Miz, they do so center stage. Outside of that, I guess it's a little like how we drive on the other side of the road in the uk. They just die on the other side of the stage in Lost Miz. Also, spoiler alert. Do we need me to explain the plot of Los Miserables? It is, of course, among the world's most famous musicals. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, adapted for the stage as a musical by Claude Michel Schonberg and Alan Bublil and Herbert Kretzma, it has been stirring and entertaining audiences for decades with its sorrowful story and its epic score. And my hot take, perhaps, about the Spanish production, having now heard Los Mis Les Mis sung in three different languages, is, I think, an awful lot of it sounds better in Spanish. And just to really generalize, with very little insight into the nuances of the language, admittedly, if you were to broadly characterize the Spanish language, it is a little more declarative and passionate than either English or French. And the material of Los Mis is inherently declarative and passionate. And so the first of the whole thing really sings out in this production. But there is also something interesting to note about vowels, because on many of the bigger notes and sort of throughout the Spanish language, there are fewer IH vowels in terms of the vowel shaping that singers are taught to do. Fewer I's, fewer E sounds. Spanish, generally, to my ear, seems to have more open, powerful, easier to sing vowels. If you look at I Dreamed a Dream as an example, the English lyrics is very sort of restrained and clipped and challenging to sing at the height of the song. There are dreams that cannot be. The Spanish translation, though, and so much of the rest of the score had these delicious, easy, open vowels that allowed for the most glorious, triumphant belting. It was all ah, and. And it was great. I just think, generally speaking, in spite of it being, you know, the French, who have so many more of them, that Spanish is an easy language in which to incentivize a revolution. Maybe that's why we're so bad at having them here in the uk. Anyway, since we're talking about the translation of it all. I don't believe this is the only time that Les MIS has been translated into Spanish. I think there are multiple versions of a translation that have happened, just like there are in French. What's interesting, and what you may not realize is that it isn't a direct translation every time. They don't directly translate Bring Him Home On My Own, I dreamed a dream, etc. And sometimes there is actually a pronounced difference in terms of the idea or the emotion or the location of the lyric that they end up with. I spoke about this more when I went to go and see the French language production in Paris at the Theatre du Chatelette a couple winters ago. But their version of One Day More is Le Grandeur, the Big day. In Spanish, it was Sal el Sol, I believe the Sun Will Rise, which does admittedly sound a little bit like the lyrics from Tomorrow in Annie. Perhaps Spanish Annie sings One more day till Revolution. I don't know. I would like to think that she does what I do think just about that the Sun Will Rise lyric, is that inherently, you know, it seems like they're talking about the same thing, they're talking about the next day. And it is looking forwards. It's the perfect energy with which to send us all off to an interval before returning in the second act to the building of the barricade and this moment of real confrontation. But there is actually a pronounced difference between that kind of a lyric and the English or the French one, because it conveys an inherent optimism in English. When they're singing One Day More, you know, they are dreaming of triumph and of success, but they aren't necessarily counting their revolutionary chickens before they hatch, because they say, you know, tomorrow we'll discover what our God in heaven has in store. They say we're going to find out one way or another. And I guess the Sun Will Rise is not necessarily like a good thing. It's more an inevitable thing. I just think it's a really interesting idea. It's a really interesting piece of imagery for that moment. Another one that stood out to me. And if I had all of the lyrics written in front of me and I could pour over translations, then there would be so many things that I could pull out from this. But it seems a little silly. But Chicas Guapas is their version of Lovely Ladies, which I think. And again, the difference in accent kind of speaks to this as well, but it sort of felt a little less bedraggled, a little more coquettish, a little bit more seductive, rather than the kind of more abrupt and harsh, like Lovely Ladies. Something about Chicas Guapas Kind of sounded to my ear, at least a little more play. I will at this point, though, get out of the mud of a language that I ultimately don't speak and talk to you about something I did understand, which were these brilliant performances, some of the best that I saw all weekend during my trip. I want to talk about Pablo Gomez Jones, a performer who I have seen on more than one occasion here in the uk, who at this performance was understudying the role of Marius, usually playing one of the student revolutionaries. And he brought a very different flavour to this role, one that was unmistakably passionate, but also boyish and youthful and thereby quite tragic as well. In the moments of. And again, spoiler alert for the events of this plot, people die. In the moments when he is cradling the dying and then dead body of Eponine after she sings whatever the Spanish version of A Little Fall of Rain is. There was this fascinating moment and I don't know to what extent it is built into this production or was a choice by Pablo in this moment, but Enjolras sort of capitalizes on the devastation here, on this tragedy, and sings usually she is the first of us to fall, reminding everyone of their purpose and the reality of death. And Pablo, as Marius looked up to him. Normally, I guess he would just kind of eulogize Eponine in his devastation, but he locks eyes with Enjolras and spits out angrily, her name was Eponine. As if to say, like, don't use her for this. She was a person. She deserves her own story. I guess the way that he sang that entire line, beautiful and really made me take notice of what can be an innocuous moment. Enjorat sort of steps back. And that's what I love about revisiting shows with new performers, is the ability of individuals, whether they are actors or creatives, to find other little details within a story we may have seen many, many times. The original production of Les Miserables, of course, was directed by Trevor Nunn, this one by Lawrence Connor and James Powell. And inherently we see this all the time with non replica versions of successful, big prolific shows. Whenever you as a creative have the opportunity to build on an existing foundation that really works, then you can achieve something which is pretty spectacular because you can unearth little details or consider things from different angles while retaining a structure where the work has already been done for you. Les Mis already works. These creatives already were able to understand how it worked and they can just sort of add little embellishments like this Little details that maybe shift our perspective on individual emotional beats. Which is not to say, I think in general that this production of Les Mis is an improvement on the previous. There are still elements that I miss, such as the turntable. There are parts of the aesthetic of this one that I find to be thrilling. There are parts that I find to be a little lacklustre. It's very heavy into projections and the sort of watercolor aesthetic which I do think is gorgeous and deliberately bleak. The one thing which I think I will always miss is the show's most powerful instrumental moment after the fall of the barricade, at which point previously the whole thing would slowly revolve around as we are hearing an instrumental reprise of the song Bring Him Home to finally reveal Enjolras dramatically collapsed on the other side of the barricade, still holding this flag of revolution. And the new staging has a version of this. And we see him collapsed over the back of a cart being wheeled away by Javert and the police. But it can't really aspire to the emotional height of the original. Let's talk about more performances. Adrian Salzadow, a perhaps perfect Jean Valjean. Beautifully sung, tender and thoughtful and with this world weary elegance as he ages into the second act, but with this palpable sense of strength and fortitude and lingering determination still existing beneath the surface, hearkening back to the young man that he was brilliantly sung. Just, just fantastic. Powerful performance from him opposite P2 Manaben's as Javert. And I love a Javert who snarls. I love a snarling Javert. And the delivery of this, the acting through song of this, the ability for me to understand the emotional intention of every single word in a language which I do not speak was magnificent. This great growling gravitas which he brought to the stage, which made the confrontation so epic, it made stars so epic. The entire score was, it's worth pointing out, just sensationally. Sunglasses. Alexia Pasquale played Cosette. And I'm so accustomed at this point to hearing that treacherously high final note of a heart full of love. Just sort of placed up there delicately, just sort of maybe glided up to ever so slightly, this kind of like sensation of a bird flying up above you, tweeting out this beautiful, delicate high note. The force with which she just unashamedly hit the thing was remarkable. Theresa Ferrer's I Dreamed a Dream as Fantine was fantastic. Elsa Ruiz Monleon probably got the biggest audience response for her rendition of On My Own. It does seem as though enduringly that is one of the most crowd pleasing moments of the show. I wonder if it's because it's slightly more emotionally relatable. Like not all of us have climbed atop a barricade in defiance of the state, but many of us have cried about a boy who doesn't like us back. I could go on because the company is dynamite to the last. The characters are recognizable here, but also individual. They really grasp firmly this sensation of desperation and whoa. This is not Les Mis by the numbers. This is Los Mis sung proudly and defiantly. And it's as great as it's ever been. Right now in Madrid. Go and check it out. The next day it was time to see with Verbocare. Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.
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Micky Jo
Hey there.
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Micky Jo
Wicked. Now this was not my first time seeing a non replica production of Wicked, I. E. Different creative interpretation to the ongoing original Broadway and West End productions. I had also seen a version in Sao Paulo, Brazil a couple of years ago, which interestingly is now touring. There's become a sort of secondary economy for Wicked because there have been at this point many, many non replica stagings, essentially because that original production is far too expensive for a lot of countries, a lot of theatre companies around the world to produce and license. So instead they license only the material and produce their own version within a smaller budget. But there has been, I think, some ambition for different theatre companies around the world to create Wicked B, a non replica version that could subsequently be produced in a couple of other places. And that version I saw in Sao Paulo is currently touring, I think, around the uae. This, however, was another completely original version of the show. Let me tell you more about the creative team. Here we go. David Serrano is credited for direction on this production. David and Alejandro Serrano are credited with what is called adaptation here, and I'm curious about what exactly that means because there is some sort of Light manipulation of the story's second act, not by changing the material necessarily, but sort of by rewriting, reworking what we see, and only in a few specific moments. The very interesting thing about this particular production of Wicked is that it has been entirely conceived and staged since the release of the film adaptation, which I think has permanently reshaped the global perspective on the musical. And it doesn't incorporate a great many changes. There has been a production somewhere in Europe which did the movie ending of Popular, which is different to the stage production. Christina Picos, as Elphaba, did do Cynthia Erivo's slide through no Good Deed when she singing, maybe that's the reason why. No Good Deed, that one. But again, in Spanish. The biggest change, however, implemented by this version of the show is to have and brace yourselves for this, Dorothy and friends appearing not as a shadow, not as a tail pulled from off stage, but just brazenly portrayed appearing on stage, including the scarecrow. Now, spoilers abound at this point, and if you don't know what happens with the second act of Wicked and how it ties into the Wonderful wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, upon which, of course, the Gregory Maguire novel that the musical is based on is itself based, then you may want to skip ahead just a little bit. But one of the more criticized plot oddities of Wicked is a stage musical is what exactly is happening with the characters of Fiyero and Bok, met by Elphaba and Galinda when they were students together at school at Sher's University in the show's first act, first Rivals and then Friends, when we head into the second act, when they have been turned into the Scarecrow and the Tin man, respectively, because, you know, they're just hanging out with Dorothy following the Yellow Brick road, singing about it with no indication of the fact that they actually have history, much of it contentious. And in Joe Mantello's original production of Wicked, per the book by Winnie Holtzman, we don't see Fiyero until right at the end, when we discover that the melting of the witch by Dorothy was actually a trick based on the rumor that had been spread that she was so impure and wicked pure water would melt her. Fierro arrives as the scarecrow, knocks on the floor, tells her that it worked, and then she arrives, There's a swell of music, a couple of people in the audience are legitimately shocked, and then they walk off together into a romantic desert. This is also exactly what happened in the film, which didn't really choose to expand at all on the Scarecrow or the Tin man with Dorothy on the yellow brick road. It didn't really show us any more. We got a little bit of. More of a glimpse into the lion and his antics. Honestly, don't get me started. All of this to say this Spanish version goes a heck of a lot further because we see Dorothy, we see the lion looking a little bit like a nightmare, I have to be honest, like a high school mascot from hell. But we meet them during March of the Witch Hunters and then we see Dorothy in the flesh throwing the bucket of water over Elphaba. And so the intriguing implication of this is that Javier Nogales, the actor who is playing Fierro, gets to play on the duality of his character at that time because he is overtly participatory in the March against the Witch and he is allied with Dorothy, but he has this whole subtextual understanding that. That he actually has helped to orchestrate this scheme in order to liberate Elphaba, that he's really on her side. And the makeup costume design is a little bit lacking here because it does just look like he has a human face and is wearing scarecrow clothes. Like, it looks like he could just go and get changed. And he has like a wide brimmed hat on, but not wide enough. So he's basically walking around through this number, clearly giving it half hearted, like, yeah, kill the witch. While sort of looking furtive and suggestive underneath his hat. And there is a brilliant, brilliant moment as he passes Madame Morrible where she's like, have I seen this scarecrow before? Why is this scarecrow familiar to me? As well as a lingering moment after Dorothy and friends walk away from the newly melted witch, when he pauses for a prolonged moment to look sadly at Glinda, eventually deciding simply to walk away and return later. But this, like I said, is another of those details that you find when glancing back at the original source material and asking yourself, what can we add to this? What else can we find in this? And so with the non replica productions that I've seen of Wicked over the years, generally you win some, you lose some. There is some stuff that simply isn't as iconic as the original. But you also have the opportunity to innovate and be creative. And I do think the production which I saw in Brazil took that opportunity. More so with things like the Tin Man's transformation and Elphaba's flight being really memorable, perhaps even better than the original, those happen to be two of the moments that this production didn't deliver very convincingly because, technically speaking, Elphaba seems to fly in Madrid the same way that she does on Broadway, only it is not disguised as well. And we can sort of, because of the lighting, see the long sort of skirt structure extending out beneath her. It doesn't feel as triumphant or stirring as previous versions of this. It doesn't look like she is flying atop a broomstick. She doesn't fly out over the audience or anything like that. They do fly a couple of monkeys on the stage, the design of which we will get to. They also don't, like, swing out of the audience. It's more like they're jumping very high. There is a moment during the end and, you know, something could have happened. We all have action accidents on the side of the stage. But there was a monkey flying without wings in tribute, I can only assume, to the Westlife song of the same name. The Bok into Tin man transformation, though, was worse. Like, much, much worse. And there's such an easy way of fixing it, because there is a conspicuous bed at the side of the stage because Nessarose, for all of her wealth as the new governor of Munchkin Land, clearly sleeps in the office. Actually, you know what? That's unfair of me. I have not thought about home accessibility solutions. Anyway, when Nessa culturally appropriates the Grimory and tries to cockblock Bok by removing one of his vital organs, that was unexpectedly hard to say cock block Bock. I sound like a chicken. Elphaba, like, lies him down on the bed and then tries to do magic with him and then leaves him there exposed. And I was so waiting for. Because there is a big curtain that can be pulled across. I'm like, cool, she's gonna do the magic and then pull the curtain across again, sort of mirroring the way the transformation is done in the original production. Then she's gonna go back to Nesta and be like, he's sleeping now. That's why I closed the curtain, so he would have have some privacy as we go on to have a rudely loud and disruptive conversation about your lingering resentments. But no, no, she leaves the curtain open because the actual moment of transformation is done in what is meant to be more of a flash. And the idea behind this is exciting because Nessa goes over to Bok and then kind of pulls the curtain across and it immediately pulls back and suddenly Bok has switched out for the Tin Man. And it's very quick and they do it quite slickly, to their credit. However, if the Tin man costume had been more convincing, this might have landed. The fact that the Tin man costume looked objectively bad made this sort of a shock moment for some of the wrong reasons. And I was just thankful not to have reacted audibly with something like, oh, no, because it's what I was thinking. And we have to talk about these costumes because they have been a point of discussion for non replica productions of Wicked around the world. People have something to say whenever production images are released. Released and they see these costumes. And there are some in this production which I really liked. I liked a lot of the stuff that Fiera was wearing in the first act. I give these designers credit because there's so much that they have to sidestep it now. Can't look that much like the original designs. It also can't look that much like the movie designs, although there were several in this that felt to me inspired by the movie designs. Glinda's long pink nightgown in popular. The entire Madame Morrible aesthetic, in which she didn't necessarily get more regal and more sinister, as we've seen before, but in which the streak in her hair that matched whatever she was wearing changed like she was a human mood ring. But it is a challenge at this point for these designers to find yet another way of interpreting these characters while still allowing them to look recognizable and familiar and sort of nodding to the iconography, but not plagiarizing it. Elphaba's hat was a sort of a peculiar shape, but there were stranger things. The sort of Michael Jackson backup dancer Jack. That chisery the flying monkey was wearing was. That was a choice. I thought to myself, this monkey doesn't need wings. What he needs is a stylist. Even worse, though, were the rest of the shiz students who arrived at the Ozdust Ballroom not to dance through life, but seemingly to dance through the clearance sale at hm. And it's not that I thought they looked cheap, they just looked ordinary. The munchkins at the beginning and the end of the show, they looked sort of quirky, like people who maybe shopped vintage, but they didn't look like otherworldly fantasy characters in the same way that we probably would like them to. The design was fascinating and I liked that we were uplifting a different colour because, you know, it's almost always pink or green or sort of rustic and brown and bronzy with steampunk detailing. This didn't really incorporate a lot of that. It was predominantly red with a circular portal in the proscenium. Invoking. I can Only assume bubble. And once the curtain link lifted, flowers everywhere. Now we struggled to separate Munchkinland from Shears. We had a difference for the Emerald City, but that in and of itself wasn't particularly visually exciting. Until the wizard's room rose up from the sub stage and his head was that of a giant baby. That was a surprise. Anyway, let's talk performances. Christina Picos as Elphaba, Christina Laurentes as Glinda. I enjoyed them both very much. Christina as Elphaba was vocally thrilling, giving you kind of like a greatest hits of some of the most iconic additions and riffs to the Wicked score, but just sounding absolutely sensational. Christina Laurente as Glinda was delivering a really fun character performance and a nice healthy balance between head and chest register as well. I've said before that Glinda's are all more fun on Broadway because their teenage versions get to be more exuberant and animated than the sort of posh private school girl that she becomes when you give her a British accent. The Spanish one seemed to be able to be extravagant and excitable and colorful. Not as much as in Brazil. They truly go nuts during popular. But I had a lot of fun with her. Glinda, I thought she did a great job. Javier's Fiero I found very charismatic. Guadalupe Lancho was playing a Madame Morrible who felt very much inspired by the films but delivered a little more powerfully. Sung a little better. But a real standout for me among this company. One which interestingly has performers in the ensemble who one of them covers both Elphaba and Glinda, which is basically unheard of. Another covers Glinda and Mary. Horrible, fascinating things happening down in Madrid. But a real standout for me was Nazan Martin as Bok, who managed to surprise me on more than one occasion. The final time that Glinda gets his name wrong at the train station before one short day and he replies, it's Bok. This was screamed with such pent up rage. It was a beautiful, passionate, characterful and comic moment all rolled into one. It was a great choice. I will always celebrate a production that takes an original approach to staging. Something I will also appreciate a production that takes a big swim. I think we could have been a little more creative here, a little more innovative. But ultimately what you are going for when you go to see Wicked is powerful vocal performances and they absolutely deliver on that.
- [28:55]
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Micky Jo
Finally. Then, let's talk about the production I was the most curious about because it's been running for a couple of years now and this is the non replica staging of the Book of Mormon. And I was curious because like I said, we have a lot of non replica Wickeds, many non replica Derevan Hansen's more recently, not a lot with the Book of Mormon to my knowledge. This is one of the only other major productions. Someone's going to tell me in the comments that there's been one somewhere that I don't know about, but I had been hearing great things about this from other theatre industry people who had been to see see it and it has gone down surprisingly well in Spain. I say surprisingly well because Spain has quite a religious Catholic culture and the notion of this show, which doesn't particularly pull its punches while lampooning, admittedly a different religion, Mormonism, but along the way says some slightly controversial things about Jesus, could quite easily have been received poorly and yet the show played very well there. It was absolutely the strongest, most vocal, most excited audience response that we encountered the entire weekend. It appears to be going from strength to strength. This is not the first cast, this is not their first theater and apparently south park is very popular in Spain. They've also made some creative choices to kind of, I think, navigate a lot of the humor in a slightly more careful way that specifically focuses it on the Mormons. An example to this would be in the original production when we first encounter Jesus in the prologue. He is depicted in a way that feels very obviously campy and Jesus in Spanish Book of Mormon is not queer coded whatsoever, which is probably a good choice. Instead, all of that particular human shifts to Elder McKinley, portrayed by Albert Bollea, who is always a closeted gay Mormon, but they've kind of dialed that up even more in this production. There's a moment when he finds Elder Price unconscious, which I don't recall from the original version of the show. I don't know the Book of Mormon as well as I know Wicked. I've probably seen it four or five times in my lifetime. But there's a moment when he sort of walks eagerly towards an unconscious Elder Price, who then awakens and foils whatever it was that Elder McKinley was excited about. Questionable. That campiness can also be seen in costuming choices during the number. Turn it off when it turns into a tap number and you have these different Mormon characters based in Uganda singing about how they stifle their concerns and personal problems by simply deciding not to think about them and repressing them. There's a moment in the original version of the show where after a very brief blackout, the lights come back up and they are all suddenly wearing pink sparkly waistcoats that seem to have come from nowhere in this production. Instead, it is a quick change into pink sparkly singlets. So like I said, Camp Factor dialed up, but only for the Mormons. And it's occurring to me as I explain the events of this show that I've not really talked about the Book of Mormon as a musical all that much on here before. So I will give you a brief little overview as well as my perspective on the show and how it often gets misinterpreted because people like to say of this show that it's just offensive. Offensive to everybody. And it was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of south park with Robert Lopez, originally directed for the stage by Trey Parker and Casey Nicholaw. People love to say that it's just offensive to everyone. It is obviously making something of a mockery of the Mormon Church and the Mormon religion. Interestingly enough, not in a way that they find wildly offensive. They sort of capitalized on the success of the show. They've run ads in the playbill before saying you've seen the show, now read the book. They're very good natured response to the show is almost charming until you remind yourself of some of their more cult like activity. The plot follows two Mormons, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham, who are paired together and sent off on their Mormon mission to Uganda. Elder Price had been hoping for Orlando. Only their arrival in Africa and their discovery of what life is like there will challenge each of them in a handful of ways. And it's at this point that the show's depiction of African characters begins to seem a little more offensive. And I say seem a little more offensive because there's layers to what's actually happening here. And it is undeniably crude and crass. And what the show is satirizing is the Western perspective on what the Third World is actually like. I think, for what it's worth, this production here actually feels less like it is punching down in a racist way, simply because the African characters on stage, even as they are being tormented by a local, self implemented dictator, are almost always depicted as so much smarter and a little happier than the Mormon characters who have come to educate them. They have a very fun energy on stage, which I think subtly but deliberately shifts the comedic direction a little bit, so it feels like we're never laughing at those characters. That's how I felt, at least. I've also seen the show a few times, so my perspective on it has shifted a little bit. The whole thing is. Is silly and deliberately stupid, but there's a cleverness to it as well, because beyond the race of it all, beyond the Mormon Church of it all, what they're actually commenting on with the show is the way in which religions can begin and the way in which they are necessitated, what they can mean to people, and also a little bit of the lunacy of it all and the silliness of it all. By the end of the show, it is quite clearly the very idea of organized religion that they have made fun of, more so than just the morph. One of my absolute favorite moments of the show being when Nabulungi, a young girl at the village who is the first to believe in the promised Land, described with some artistic license by Elder Cunningham as he borrows from various science fiction inspirations, finds out that he has been lying to her. She sings an angry reprise of the song Hassediga Ibywai, which devastatingly is not included on the cast recording. So every time I see the show live, I remember that that's gonna happen and it's very exciting. But she then has to go to her friends and neighbors and tries to tell them that it's all lie, that Salt Lake, as she calls it, doesn't really exist. And this is my favorite scene when they say to her, nabalungi, you didn't really think that was a real place, did you? And they explain that it's a metaphorical place inside of ourselves or something to that effect. It's hilarious. She's fantastic. She's played by Ayesha Fey. She sings the hell out of it. As did the performer playing Elder Price, who at this performance was an understudy for the role, Nicolas Colbert. I have heard some of the really great first rate musical theater tenors simply try and navigate this score as written. To hear somebody sing it and then opt up on the sections of I Believe in the megamix happening at the end was so audacious and so fantastic. Even within the song I Believe, which is this insurmountable sing, adding little like I Believe or whatever. The Spanish lyrics were so, so good. He also read much younger on stage than the role is traditionally cast, which I thought was worked really well for him. And Elder Cunningham, he is played by Alejandra Mesa who had this young Eugene Levy, but thoroughly more caffeinated energy was absolutely hilarious. And comedy, physical comedy and energy that transcended again the language barrier made me laugh so, so much for these wacky choices that he was making throughout the show. And Elder Cunningham needs to be this ball of chaotic energy and nervousness. And it's from this very real sense of fear that he creates these imaginary solutions to his problems and ends up entirely reshaping a religion. One of the best performances I saw while we were in Spain. He was great. Now the material contains a great many pop culture references and some of these have been switched. There are four characters encountered during the Spooky Mormon Hell Dream sequence which has new design elements. There are giant donut eyes at the back of the stage which I thought were so, so fun. Every time we see like hobbits or Yoda or Darth Vader. Still, that still kills. Like audiences everywhere love that. But the final character who arrives in Spooky Mormon Hell Dream has been swapped out for Silvio Berlusconi. I think before it was OJ's lawyer, right? He'd sing I Got OJ Freed. Now instead, Silvio Berlusconi sings about a TV channel that he created. Apparently. I don't believe you can currently find the Spanish Book of Mormon lyrics online. If anyone does know where I get can I have so many questions because there are in the original score so many references to pre existing musical theatre songs. Some of these are in the melodies, some of these are just sort of in the entire number. Like how Hasadiga Ibi is basically hakuna matata and there's so many more that speak to various different numbers. There is a part of I Believe that specifically references I have confidence from the Sound of Music in English he sings, I allowed my faith to be shaken. Oh, what's the matter with me? And then later he'll sing a warlord who shoots people in the face. What's so scary about that? And I don't believe the Spanish translation mirrors the Spanish translation of I have Confidence from the Spanish Sound of Music, which interestingly enough has a different title that translates to something like Tears and Smiles, I believe. In any case, the joke of that reference didn't sound seem to necessarily land, but it also doesn't that often land with a West End audience either. I think it's one of those things that only really plays to a niche theatre crowd. It probably gets a laugh on Broadway and not anywhere else. There's a reference usually in the song I'm Africa, which this time around was a standout, surprisingly like very crowd pleasing number. Normally Elder Cunningham will arrive and sing just like Bono, I Am Africa. And it was changed, I believe, for Gandhi, which feels still silly, but not quite in the same way. Going all the way back to the opening number, hello. You would assume that they would sing Hola, me llamo Elder Price. But they don't. They sing K? Tal. So instead of singing hello, hello, hello, hello, they sing K? Tal, which I believe translates to like, what's up? Or how are you? There was a moment that threw me in this song because they suddenly said something in English and not only was I not expecting to hear English, I also thought I never normally hear that line in English. And it's because in the original version of the show, in the English language version, they sing me llamo Elder White, Are these your kids, etc. And so Meamo Elder White. For that to be a second language, they had to flip it so the whole song was now in Spanish. And at that point they sang My name is Elder White. And so that was fun. But honestly, the entire production was fun. This is also directed by David Serrano. The energy of it all was so infectious, so joyous and so silly. You understand why it has run as long as it has. And there are so many nods to the line ranking, which is playing on the other side of Granvia just across the street. I love that it's now in the theater where it is. It's very rare for me to feel as though any of these non replica productions can really rival the original staging. But a couple of creative aspects of this I think really did or almost seem to eclipse it. One of those was Ike Carrera's choreography, which I thought was absolutely fantastic. So high energy. I loved it in 2x2. I loved it in I Am African occur just brilliantly staged numbers. Another was the set design, this by Ricardo Sanchez Cuerda. I loved this. I loved the Uganda village set. I loved the airport set in Utah. I loved the little video that they had in the background playing a sort of local montage on a loop. The Uganda set, which is revealed when all the rest of it flies out and things sort of turn around, is built out of containers and boxes and a lot of sort of recyclable material materials. And I think again, it's a slightly stronger depiction of those characters and that community for being somewhere that actually looks like a place you could live in. From what I can remember of that set in the Broadway West End production, it's sort of just more of a desolate wasteland, whereas this is designed to feel a lot more like an actual dwelling and a functioning community, which makes the arrival of the Mormons feel a little more egregious. As much as I can intellectualize, though, about this show, it's the Book of Mormon and it works because it's funny. And funny is something that delivers in almost every language, especially when it's physical comedy, especially when it's wacky cartoonish personalities. There aren't an awful lot of shows out there in the world of musical theatre like the Book of Mormon that have the same kind of appeal, that connects the same kind of demographic. It's a similar reason why the Play that Goes Wrong is also currently running in a successful multi year Spanish language production in Madrid and continues to play around the world. And that finally brings me to the end of this triple bill review of these three musicals that I saw in Madrid. I am very eager to go back to Madrid, or perhaps to a different part of Spain and continue to see more theater there. I'd love to see some original shows, some things I don't have the chance to see elsewhere around the world, but it was also really great for my first visit and my first experience of seeing shows in Spanish to be about shows that I already understood really well in different productions. And I hope, as always, that you enjoyed listening to my thoughts. If you have had the chance to see these shows, I would love to know what you thought in the comments section down below. And if you'd like to hear more of my reviews, make sure that you're subscribed here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms. If you would like to see more of what the Madrid Theatre district was like and more of what our trip was like, you can go and check out that full two hour vlog. In the meantime, stay tuned for more reviews and theatre coverage coming very soon. I have been Mickey Jo and as always I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day.
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