The Book of Mormon Review: Still the Best Thing I’ve Ever Seen on a Stage

The Book of Mormon is coming back to Ottawa. When I found out I immediately dropped everything to update this post, because some things in this world are simply non-negotiable and seeing this show is one of them. I originally wrote about it back in 2014 after catching the touring production at the National Arts Centre, but it deserves better than a twelve-year-old review with a broken link and a photo that probably no longer loads. It deserves a proper send-up. So here we are.

In the year of our Lord (or Heavenly Father, as the Mormons say), 2026, we need to laugh. God, do we need to laugh. The world is a lot right now. The news is exhausting. The sacred cows are multiplying. Which is exactly why The Book of Mormon, a musical that takes every sacred cow it can find and drags them across the stage one by one, feels more necessary than ever.

If you can’t make fun of the Mormons, then who can you, I ask? In today’s politically correct world, we’re surrounded by sacred cows everywhere, and even the blondes and Newfies are pushing back for Pete’s sake. This is why, in part, The Book of Mormon is such an utterly brilliant piece of theatre. And why, more than a decade after I first saw it, I’m still telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s the single best thing I’ve ever watched on a stage.

I’m a Gen X woman who has been going to the theatre since I was old enough to have opinions about it, which was early. I’ve sat through the full spectrum: the transcendent, the merely competent, and the kind that makes you clock-watch from the overture. I know what good theatre feels like. The Book of Mormon felt like nothing I’d experienced before, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

I caught the touring production at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa back in July 2014. I went in skeptical. South Park never did much for me, and I wasn’t sure a raunchy musical from those guys would be my thing. I came out converted. Not to Mormonism. To the show. And now it’s coming back, and if you live anywhere near Ottawa, you have no excuse.

What Is The Book of Mormon Musical?

The Book of Mormon is a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) and Robert Lopez, who co-wrote Avenue Q and would later win an Oscar for Frozen’s “Let It Go.” It opened on Broadway on March 24, 2011 and won nine Tony Awards that year, including Best Musical, Best Direction, Best Original Score, and Best Book of a Musical. It is still running.

That’s the clean version. Here’s the real version: it’s a musical that takes organised religion (specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but honestly, any faith tradition will feel the heat) and dissects it with a scalpel disguised as a joy buzzer. It is sharp, it is profane, it is uncomfortably hilarious, and underneath all of that, it is surprisingly moving. I did not see that last part coming.

What’s The Book of Mormon About?

The story follows two young Mormon missionaries: Elder Price and Elder Cunningham. Elder Price is the golden boy, handsome, confident, absolutely certain that God has special plans for him personally. Elder Cunningham is the other guy: nerdy, compulsive, a chronic liar, devoted to his companion in the slightly unhinged way of someone who has never had many friends.

They graduate from their missionary training and are assigned to Uganda. Uganda was not on Elder Price’s list. He wanted Orlando.

They arrive expecting “Hakuna Matata” and find “Hasa Diga Eebowai.” I won’t translate that for you (you will thank me when you hear it for the first time in the theatre) but I will tell you that Uganda, as presented in the show, has AIDS, famine, a warlord with a truly horrifying platform, and no shortage of reasons to question whether a cheerful American missionary with a name tag is going to be remotely useful.

What follows is the story of two wildly unprepared young men trying to do something good in an impossible place, while the belief system they were raised in gets stress-tested at every turn. Elder Price has a crisis of faith. Elder Cunningham improvises the scripture in ways that are both catastrophic and, improbably, kind of effective. The Ugandan villagers are not passive props in this story. They have the funniest, most devastating song in the show. The whole thing builds to an ending that somehow manages to be genuinely optimistic without being saccharine.

Note: watch for the actual sacred cow that gets dragged across the stage. Not a metaphor. An actual cow. It is one of my favourite moments in the history of live theatre.

Why The Book of Mormon Works When It Shouldn’t

Here is the thing about this show that I keep coming back to: it should not work. On paper, a musical that makes extensive jokes about AIDS, female genital mutilation, child soldiers, and the literal content of the Book of Mormon has no business being one of the most warmly received Broadway productions of the last twenty years. And yet.

It works because Parker, Stone, and Lopez are not mocking the people who believe. They’re mocking the institution, the certainty, the wilful refusal to look at what’s actually in front of you. Elder Price and Elder Cunningham are not figures of contempt. They’re genuinely loveable idiots doing their best. The Ugandan villagers are not a punchline. They are the moral centre of the show.

And the music is just flat-out excellent. I Believe will live in your brain for weeks. Hello! sets up the entire premise in about four minutes with more efficiency than most musicals manage in a full first act. The staging is clever, the performances in the touring production I saw were extraordinary, and the whole thing moves with the confidence of a creative team who knew exactly what they were doing.

I cringed every time I laughed. I squirmed in my seat. That discomfort is not a bug, it’s the feature. The show is doing something to you on purpose, and if you let it, it works.

About the Creators: Parker, Stone & Lopez

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been skewering organised religion, American culture, and pretty much everything else since the mid-1990s. They built South Park on the premise that nothing is too sacred to examine, and that the most honest comedy often comes from the most uncomfortable places. By the time they started working on The Book of Mormon, they’d spent years doing exactly that on television. The musical was the project where they got to take all of that and apply actual craft to it.

Robert Lopez brought that craft. He’d already co-written Avenue Q, which won the Tony for Best Musical in 2004, the year it beat out Wicked, which tells you something. Lopez went on to become only the second person in history to win an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). The Book of Mormon was part of that journey. His ability to write songs that are simultaneously funny and emotionally real is what gives the show its backbone.

The combination of Parker and Stone’s irreverence with Lopez’s genuine musical theatre chops is what makes this show more than a long sketch. It’s a real musical, built properly, that happens to also be the funniest thing I’ve seen in years.

Fun Facts About The Book of Mormon Musical

• It took nearly a decade to make. Parker, Stone, and Lopez started developing the show in the mid-2000s. It opened on Broadway in 2011.
• It won nine Tony Awards in 2011, including Best Musical, Best Direction, Best Original Score, Best Book, Best Choreography, and Best Lighting Design.
• The Church responded with remarkable class. The official statement from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was essentially: the show may entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as scripture will endure. They also took out ads in the playbill. Respect.
• Robert Lopez is an EGOT winner. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. Book of Mormon gave him the Tony. Frozen gave him the Oscar. Avenue Q gave him an earlier Tony. The man is not slowing down.
• The show has been running continuously since 2011. On Broadway, in London’s West End, and in North American touring productions. As of 2026 it is still touring.
• South Park fans will recognise the DNA, but you do not need to be a South Park fan to love this show. I wasn’t, and here we are.
• The show holds the record for the fastest-selling show in Broadway history at the time of its debut.

My Verdict: See It. Twice If You Can.

There are not many shows I would bother seeing again. Or even seeing the first time, frankly. The Lion King. I know, I know. Wildly popular, universally beloved, and I could not have cared less. So I do not simply agree with the critics or follow the crowd when it comes to theatre.

The Book of Mormon is an exception to all of that. There is so much brilliance layered into this production that it honestly might take two or three viewings to catch all of it. The jokes operate on multiple levels at once. The songs reward repeat listening. The performances in the touring production I caught were extraordinary.

It has been over a decade and I’m still recommending it to everyone I know. I’m still thinking about the sacred cow. I’m still humming I Believe at inopportune moments. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything when it comes to theatre.

If you have the chance to see it, whether that’s a touring production, regional theatre, West End, or wherever, go. Go without reading any more spoilers. Let the show do what it does.

The Book Of Mormon FAQS

The Bottom Line

The Book of Mormon takes the sacred cow and drags it across the stage. Literally. And somehow in doing so, it ends up being one of the most humanist pieces of theatre I’ve encountered. It doesn’t hate religion. It hates wilful blindness. It loves the messy, confused, earnest people who are just trying to make sense of the world and do a little good in it.

See it. And one final round of genuine respect to the Mormons who paid for advertising in the playbill. Still the classiest move in Broadway history. This is, however, not an invitation to ring my bell.