The Book of Mormon

Eugene O’Neill Theatre

New York, (212) 239-6200

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Who knew that the creators of South Park would turn out to be devout followers of “the church of Broadway?” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. In the first major work they’ve written for the stage, Trey Parker and Matt Stone—with help from Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez—have concocted an “old-fashioned, pleasure-giving musical, the kind our grandparents told us left them walking on air.” To be sure, The Book of Mormon, featuring an odd-couple pair of missionaries sent from Salt Lake City to Uganda to convert impoverished villagers, is as “blasphemous, scurrilous,” and unapologetically foul-mouthed as Parker and Stone’s TV fans might expect. Yet even as the production laughs at Joseph Smith and Mormon theology, its heart remains “as pure as that of a Rodgers and Hammerstein show.” The ultimate message is that while all religion is, “on some level, absurd,’’ faith is also valiant and admirable, because it enables us “to walk through the shadows of daily life and death.’’

“It’s easier, of course, not to feel stung by comedy when your background is not the one being gored,” said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. But Mormonism is less the creators’ target than “that almost unbearable brand of optimism Americans tend to want to impose on the rest of the world.” Aiming its arrows there, this “extraordinarily well-crafted musical” emerges as “one of the most joyously acidic bundles Broadway has unwrapped in years.” Four of its little-known lead performers—including Nikki M. James as a villager and Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad as the missionaries—are about to become stars.

Let’s not get overexcited, said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. Though Mormon is the first new musical in years “that has the smell of a send-in-the-tourists hit,” it’s a “one-joke show” burdened by songs with “embarrassingly ill-crafted” lyrics. Besides, it’s hardly daring to mock Mormonism in front of a Broadway crowd. Try that trick with Islam. But the joy of this production isn’t based on mockery, said Scott Brown in New York. Parker and Stone’s cynicism consistently gives way to a kind of “scruffy humanism” that’s “eager to redeem” everyone on stage—even the minor characters. Lord knows, that sensibility has redeemed the Broadway musical.