 A Very Merry Unauthorized Children 's Scientology Pageant received positive reviews from the press . A review in The New York Times described the musical as having a " crude , faux @-@ naïf sensibility " , and stated that it " provides a cult @-@ hit blueprint for a young generation that prefers its irony delivered with not a wink but a blank stare . " A 2003 review in New York City 's The Village Voice compared the show to The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , stating : " Just as Ui doesn 't explain the complex phenomenon of the Third Reich , Scientology Pageant doesn 't probe the psychology of cults ; instead , both demystify subjects whose appeal stems in no small part from the mystique their acolytes have attributed to them . " Though most of the media reception of the musical was positive , New York Church of Scientology President John Carmichael did not have kind words for the production . Carmichael asserted that L. Ron Hubbard was portrayed in the play as " an authoritarian demagogue whose methods create emotionless followers . " Other critics complained that the young members of the cast were portraying characters and depicting content that they could not understand . 
