Mitt-Bot, Godzicka, gays and bouncing Buddhas—it’s “Voyeur” time

Note: Partner-in-crime Dan Nailen has also reviewed “Saturday’s Voyeur” here.

When a couple of wise guys from South Park, Colo., ripped off Salt Lake Acting Co.’s four-decade franchise on spoofing Mormons and took it to Tony Award success on Broadway, it set the bar high back in Utah for 2012’s “Saturday’s Voyeur.”

SLAC has risen to the challenge by producing a post-graduate “Book of Mormon” that is more nuanced that usual in its shots at the culture that surrounds Utahns and pervades every aspect of life, from government to where and what they drink to who they sleep with.

For all its scathing satire, “Voyeur” 2012 manages to have heart.

Never fear, it takes a raucous, bawdy trip through the bowels of the LDS Church Office Building to reach that heart. Where else but “Voyeur” would you year musical numbers that include a tribute to the gay rehabilitative power of BYU “blue bazooms”  (to the tune of “99 Red Balloons”), “Do the Mo-Mo Motion” and the less-than-though-provoking “Mo-mos and the Homos Can’t be Friends.”

As I am every time I see ‘Voyeur,’ I was surprised with SLAC’s top-notch performers, choreography, book and lyrics. That alone was enough to delight an out-of-town tourist who joined me for the performance.

The plot’s arch begins with the “Curse of Obama” and leads to Mitt Romney’s presidential nomination—”Everything’s Coming Up Mormons.”

In the process, Voyeur skewers proxy baptisms, a recent membership-inflation controversy, the Mormon church’s struggles with “same sex attraction” and gay rehabilitation, its Demo-phobia and the paradox of City Creek Center, where most Mormons can’t afford to shop.

Brother Nephi, a cheeky “Internet Mormon”, suggests the church begin proxy baptizing dead Muslims. “One of these days, we’re going to run out of Jews to baptize and Muslims will be all we can get.”

Of course, Voyeur’s perennial target of choice appears as Gayle Godzicka of the Eagle Quorum, who, in this iteration, is the erotic focus of LDS uber-bureaucrat Elder Marriott. Godzicka is celebrated as a cultural icon “Too sexy for my hair. Too sexy to Nair.”

“Mitt-Bot” is lauded as “not too deep and kind of a creep,” but “We follow, we wallow, we swallow Mitt.”

Elder Marriott and Mitt-Bot plot to funnel church tithings into Mitt’s campaign, noting, “There’s no connection between this church and politics.” Then laugh uproariously.

Did I say this “Voyeur” has heart?

Oh, yeah. A thread runs through “Voyeur 2012” of sympathy for the ambivalence and heartbreak that thinking and caring Mormons have with their church’s rock-ribbed conservatism. The show closes with “Be Free,” in which the characters counsel: “Take the good from the church, leave the bad and just move on.”

“Voyeur” aficionados can look forward to humming tunes related to:

• Pat Bagley-esque church security men who double as Godzicka’s flying monkeys.
• A Borscht Belt Angel Nephi who zings one liners and advises “never take a Democrat for a wife. Get a bunch of wives with blue bazooms.”
• A wild tribute to mammary glands with lyrics that include a cascade of obscure euphemisms for boobs, including Elmer Fudds, Bobbsey Twins, pumped-up hubcaps, humped-back whales, two-point jumpers, rutabagas, porky pigs, Holy Grails, bouncing Buddhas and Prop 8s.