‘Book’-em and MORE Theatre Things

The smash hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon has music, lyrics and book by the inspired pairing of South Park co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone with Robert Lopez, who co-created the puppet musical Avenue Q before co-writing the more mainstream songs for Frozen, Frozen II and Coco. Not surprisingly, the show is highly irreverent, using vulgarity and more in its satirical mocking of religious Belief in this not wholly unsympathetic story of two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints attempting to preach the faith to the inhabitants of a remote Ugandan village. Mormon not only earned nine Tony Awards and a Grammy, but also continues to break records in its ongoing run at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, a run that will reach 15 years in a few days. The latest official touring production is coming our way again, but unfortunately for dawdlers, it’s completely sold out all 3,000 seats over its two-day run February 24-25 as part of the Broadway in Santa Barbara series at the Granada. 

The ‘Stark’-side of Talk with MORE & TVSB 

At the other end of the theatrical spectrum, the barely two-year-old site-specific collective called MORE Theater/SB has three more shows in its world premiere of Chinwag, a new play by local literary luminary David Starkey. The title of the former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate’s collaboration with MORE’s founder-artistic director Meg Kruszewska is British slang for having a chat – appropriate, as the play is not only set in 1976 at a local public access TV station but is being performed at TVSB, which, of course, is our half-century old local public access TV station. (The concept was sparked when Kruszewska was actually interviewed on Starkey’s TVSB program, The Creative Community.) 

The action begins when “second-wave feminist” Dorothy takes over the low-rating talk show hosted by the famously mustached host Russ O’Sullivan (hint, hint) as he preps to interview a slate of local guests in “Santa Teresa,” the same fictionalized stand-in for Santa Barbara that was famously employed by longtime Montecito author Sue Grafton in her alphabet series of detective novels. The wild, and wildly funny, dark comedy unfolds when the small-town revolution is televised.

Kruszewska – whose three decades of experience as a theater artist spans BAM, the Shubert Organization in New York, and regional theaters around the country – directs the cast that includes Meredith McMinn, Matt Tavianini, Alaina Dean, Heather Grosch, E. Bonnie Lewis, and Will Muse. Performances are 7 pm on February 20-21 and 2 pm on February 22 at TVSB, 329 S. Salinas Street, where the capacity is less than five percent of the Granada’s. Visit www.moretheatersb.com