Let there be light-hearted irreverence

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of “South Park,” are notoriously irreverent. Teaming up with Robert Lopez, co-creator of the puppet musical “Avenue Q,” the University of Colorado alumni have taken their impiety to a new level and a new venue—Broadway.

And lo, “The Book of Mormon” is a Broadway musical in which two young missionaries confront a vastly different world in sub-Saharan Africa. Both Colorado natives, Stone and Parker grew up around Mormons, a group they view with considerable fondness, if not the deference the church might wish.

In a recent interview, Parker told The New York Times that the team decided early on that the musical should not focus on Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

“Really, the most musical kind of story that’s inherent to Mormon is the story of missionaries, and just the fact that it’s such a built-in coming-of-age story,” Parker said. “Boys can be paired with someone for two years they don’t even know and then sent somewhere across the world.”

“We love musicals, and we love Mormons,” Parker told Vogue magazine. “I think if any Mormons come and stay all the way through, they’ll end up liking the show. I mean, it rips on them a lot, but in the end their spirit of wanting to help wins the day.”

In the musical, two young missionaries travel to Africa, a juxtaposition that seemed inherently amusing, Stone told the Times. “The boys who go on the mission are goodhearted. They’re not bad guys, and they’re not hellfire religious guys,” Stone said.

“They’re just two 19-year-old kids trying to do the right thing. And most of the Africans, they’re really good people stuck in the [worst] place on earth, with no hope to get out. You put them in there. Seemed like that should be funny.”

Verily, it seems like reviewers agree: New York magazine opined that “Mormon” arrived after months of hype, yet “somehow delivers even more than its ridiculously felicitous advance buzz promised: It’s an often uproarious, spiritually up-tempo satire not just of Mormonism, and not just religion in general, but of (no kidding) Occidental civilization itself, in all its well-intentioned, self-mythologizing, autoerotically entitled glory.”

Entertainment Weekly gave the show an “A” rating and prounounced the tale “R-rated, hilarious, humane, and the basis of an exhilarating Broadway musical at once revolutionary and classic, funny and obscene, uncompromising in production standards and unafraid of just about anything else.”

“‘The Book of Mormon’ achieves something like a miracle,” a New York Times review proclaims.

“It both makes fun of and ardently embraces the all-American art form of the inspirational book musical. No Broadway show has so successfully had it both ways since Mel Brooks adapted his film ‘The Producers’ for the stage a decade ago. … ‘The Book of Mormon’ has its tasty cake (from an old family recipe) and eats it with sardonic relish.”

The Times adds: “a major point of ‘The Book of Mormon’ is that when looked at from a certain angle, all the forms of mythology and ritual that allow us to walk through the shadows of daily life and death are, on some level, absurd.”

“At the end of the day, if the mass delusion of a religion makes you happy, makes your family work better, is that bad or good?” Stone asked Slate magazine.

As Slate noted, some atheists believe that truth is the highest good, and that crackpot religious stories need to be debunked. “I'm not quite sure,” Stone said. “I'm not sure the veracity of the stories is that important.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints holds a different view. Before the show opened, the church responded to media requests for comment by issuing the following statement:

“The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ.”

“The Book of Mormon” is playing at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York and is scheduled to appear elsewhere as well. For more information, see www.bookofmormonbroadway.com.