About the work
The musical by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of South Park) with Robert Lopez (composer of Avenue Q) was premiered in 2011 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on Broadway. It won nine Tony Awards including Best Musical and became one of the most commercially successful Broadway musicals of the 2010s. The German-language premiere took place in Stuttgart in 2019.
Plot
The two Mormon missionaries Elder Price and Elder Cunningham are sent to a mission in Uganda. While the self-confident Elder Price dreams of grand plans and unshakeable faith, the awkward Elder Cunningham is an outsider who does not even know the Book of Mormon properly. In a village beset by AIDS, poverty, and a brutal warlord, their rehearsed conversion methods fail completely. Cunningham improvises his own version of the Mormon doctrine—made up on the spot, but wildly effective. Price experiences a crisis of faith but arrives at a new humility. By the end, an absurd but functioning community has emerged.
Cultural significance
The Book of Mormon is one of the sharpest religious satires in theatre history and simultaneously a loving homage to the classic Broadway musical. The Mormon Church responded calmly, even placing advertisements in the programme. The work is celebrated as a masterpiece of balance between uncompromising provocation and genuine warmth. Musical numbers such as Hello!, I Believe, and You and Me (But Mostly Me) are contemporary musical classics. The German-language production successfully brought the work to the more conservative German musical market.