Interview: Andy Huntington Jones of THE BOOK OF MORMON at Peace Center

Entertainment Weekly called The Book of Mormon "the funniest musical of all time."

And I for one would be hard-pressed to disagree.

The Tony Award-winning smash returns to Greenville's Peace Center on March 5. We asked Andy Huntington Jones, who plays Elder McKinley, to tell us how it feels to be part of such an international sensation.

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BWW: First tell us a little about yourself.

I grew up north of Boston and I have been living in New York City for the past eight years - and that is exciting for a young person! - and I have been working on tour and on Broadway for that whole time. And I am really, really excited to come back to Greenville. I toured to Greenville about three or four years ago with the first national tour of Cinderella and I loved it. I LOVED Greenville so much. I'm so excited to come back.

BWW: That's great to hear! What are some of the things you remember about our town?

Our experience is very reliant on what the area by the theatre tends to be, and that stretch of Main Street is just so charming. And I remember having a great time. The crew there in Greenville - we have a wig person who comes out and substitutes for our tour sometimes and she is one of the local people in Greenville, so we'll get to see her and that will be fun.

BWW: We're looking forward to having you back! So how long have you been on Book of Mormon?

Just about a year. Of all the shows to take on the road, this is a really interesting one because different cities react in different ways. And it's been incredible to see how, for a show about such a hot button topic, everyone reacts in different ways, and people walk away with different conclusions, but everybody has an incredible time. That has been the biggest learning experience for me over the past year, to see that whether we are in a very liberal city or if we are in the bible belt, people laugh at different things but everyone jumps to their feet at the end and had a great time, and that has been a surprise to me.

BWW: Tell me about playing Elder McKinley.

Elder McKinley is a supporting character and he is the head of the Mormon missionaries in Uganda. So he welcomes our two main characters to their mission in Uganda, and the Mormons are having a difficult time converting everyone - or anyone - to the faith there. So Elder McKinley teaches our protagonists about the Mormon way to handle adversity, which is by smiling and ignoring it. He has a really fun song called "Turn It Off" early in the first act, and it's just a joy to do a show that is so funny. I mean our writers are the guys who created South Park so the sense of humor is spot-on, I mean it's the funniest show on Broadway and we're coming to Greenville.

BWW: I was fortunate enough to see it twice last time it was here and I laughed just as much the second time.

Obviously we have humor that is so unexpected in a Broadway musical, I mean the humor is definitely South Park-oriented in a lot of ways - intense humor - and I think one of the reasons it's so funny is you have this crude humor with these innocent nineteen year old missionaries wearing white shirts and ties and all of a sudden they're thrust into this world that they do not fit in. And I think another reason that the show has been such a success is it's escapist and fun to watch. You have a great time and laugh the whole night through, but after the two and a half hour show you walk away, you drive away, thinking about your own belief systems and what do you believe in and what is your faith, and what role does that play in your life. And I think that is one of the key facts to the show that makes it worth seeing. It is a meaningful piece of theatre.

BWW: How easy or difficult is it for you to build yourself up for doing the same role every night for months at a time?

Something that helps with doing eight shows a week for a long run is being involved in a show that is meaningful to you, so I think The Book of Mormon is easier to do eight times a week than other shows that I've done. But I would say that a lot of us went to school and trained in musical theatre, and you learn the craft and you learn about different skill sets, but learning how to maintain a show and keep it fresh, both for yourself and for the audience eight times a week, that is definitely something that you have to learn in the trenches. And I feel like we all have our own ways to keep it fresh. A couple of years ago I realized that was becoming a challenge for me when I was working on Cats in New York. That was just two and a half-hours on stage hunched over like a cat eight times a week. And that was physically exhausting, but the mental repetition of this creative venture was a big challenge, and I picked up meditation and that has been a really important tool for me in terms of keeping this experience fresh. But it also helps working on a comedy, because every night the show feels a little bit different, because the audience reacts differently. The timing is never quite concrete, it's always a little bit giving to the audiences responses. Even within the songs, there are a couple of places where we have certain transitional musical moments that depending on how an audience is responding might be longer or shorter, so there are certain key moments of the show where I really tune into "is this going to be three counts today or is this going to be eleven counts today, how are they responding?"

BWW: So as far as the show being something that encourages audiences to think about meaning, how has it affected you?

The biggest takeaway for me in working with people from different backgrounds, from working with some people who used to be in the Mormon church, and going around the country performing the show for all different types of people, performing the show for Mormons as well, I think the biggest takeaway - and the takeaway from the show - is that we are not very different. That we all, no matter what our belief system is, we all want to do good on the planet, and we all want love and connection and that has been a wonderful thing to realize. It is so validating to work on a show that makes fun of religion, absolutely, but it ultimately celebrates this human need to have something to believe in.

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The Book of Mormon runs March 5-10 at The Peace Center in downtown Greenville, SC. For tickets and showtimes call the box office at 864.467.3000 or visit peacecenter.org.

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