The Book of Mormon Loves Musicals More Than You! As everyone with a modicum of intelligence knows, musicals are the highest form of art. Nowhere is this more gleefully affirmed than in The Book of Mormon, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez’s audacious Broadway juggernaut. On the surface, it’s exactly what you might expect from the minds behind South Park: irreverent, blasphemous, and more than a little crude. Yet beneath the outrageous gags and taboo-poking humour lies a deeply affectionate celebration of the musical as an art form.
What makes The Book of Mormon remarkable is how fully it embraces, and even worships, the classic structures of musical theatre. Its opening number, “Hello,” is a pitch-perfect parody of the “welcome to our world” trope, while songs like “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” and “Turn It Off” directly echo Broadway traditions, from bombastic hero duets to tap-dancing showstoppers. Every number, no matter how shocking the lyrics, is staged with a knowing wink to the lineage of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, and even Disney. The satire may cut deep, but it is built on reverence.
The crude jokes, then, aren’t ends in themselves but tools to remind us of the enduring optimism and transformative power of the genre. Even when the story veers into absurdity, the characters remain grounded in that classic musical tradition: dreamers who believe, against all odds, that song and faith (whether in God, in friendship, or in storytelling itself) can change the world. In its final moments, when the missionaries find new meaning through myth-making, the show slyly suggests that belief and theatre share the same DNA: both demand a suspension of disbelief, and both, at their best, can give people hope.
Far from mocking the genre, The Book of Mormon exalts it. Its irreverence is a disguise for devotion, its vulgarity a counterpoint that makes its earnestness shine all the brighter. This is not just a comedy about religion, it is a love letter to musicals themselves, reminding us that no matter how cynical the world becomes, there is nothing quite as subversively powerful as a chorus line singing in perfect harmony
Simon, 09 Sep 2025
