The Book of Mormon

Tonight, we were in for a treat as we headed down to Detroit to see the "Book of Mormon" at the Fisher Theater; however, first we met up with Tommy and Regina at one of our favorite spots for dinner, Seva.

Apparently, Seva has been around since the 1970s out in Ann Arbor, but we only recently experienced Seva last year, and ever since, we've been hooked.  They specialize in vegetarian offering a completely vegetarian menu with a few select vegan items.  If you glance at their menu, you can see they've taken the vegetarian spin on most of your standard menu items like burgers, stir fry, burritos, enchiladas, etc.  Plus there are always interesting specials, the juice bar to dive into, and for us, at least one Michigan beer.  Tommy and Regina joined us for our first tasting here where they introduced us to the General Tso's Cauliflower appetizer (lightly tempura butter, sweet and sour chili sauce over cauliflower), which is apparently a must order.  We couldn't break the tradition at this point.  For dinner, Scottie and I both polished off a healthy plate of the Cilantro-Peanut Stir Fry.  I remember the first time we had the Black Bean & Sweet Potato Quesadilla and Spinach Enchiladas along with splitting Rennie's Peanut-Kale Salad, which was a whole lot of food, but delicious (but the Spinach Enchiladas were a little disappointing).

With our tummies full, we drove a few blocks over to the Fisher Theater to experience The Book of Mormon.  Scottie scored us some sweet seats on the main floor (after refreshing his browser constantly the day the tickets went on sale), which was so much better than having to pay $200+ as these were hot tickets in the D (and I'm sure even more in other cities).  Mormon is a collaboration between the creators of South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) and the composer of "Avenue Q", Robert Lopez, which we saw in this same theater back in 2008.

This is the story of two Mormon missionaries - a standup, natural leader and the disheveled, follower - who are sent from Salt Lake City (depicted as if it were New York City) to Uganda to convert more Africans to the Mormon religion.  While not their ideal destination as the leader would have preferred his dream city, Orlando, the musical drastically changes its tune as the missionaries encounter a host of interesting characters.  The New York Times summed it up well:

Our heroes must confront a one-eyed, genocidal warlord with an unprintable name. And a defeated, defensive group of villagers, riddled with AIDS, who have a few choice words for the God who let them wind up this way. And local folks like the guy who keeps announcing that he has maggots in his scrotum.

The core of the musical explores not only these encounters, but their often hilarious attempts to convert the non-believing Africans.  Furthermore, the two missionaries seem to discover themselves in the process.  Make no mistake though, Mormon is filled with clever ballads and spares no religion, race, or stereotype.  It was eye-opening and even uplifting.  Even more, it was surprising and encouraging to see a mixed crowd of Detroiters and suburbanites united under one roof in awe of a performance that was not the Detroit Red Wings or the Tigers!  Two big thumbs-up from us!