Overview
If you haven't made it across the ditch to catch The Book of Mormon, don't worry — Trey Parker and Matt Stone's hit musical is on its way. 'The mormons are coming', posters popping up all around Auckland started promising this week. And come March 2020, they'll officially be here.
Written by South Park and Team America's notoriously puerile creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, together with Robert Lopez of genius grown-up muppet show Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon is probably one of the most lauded comedies ever to have centred on the Church of Latter Day Saints, African missions, AIDS, bum jokes and super ironic racism. If it wasn't so smart and so funny, few would forgive it. But since it is, The Book of Mormon has picked up nine Tonys, four Olivier Awards and a Grammy since it debuted in 2011, and has been called "one of the most joyously acidic bundles Broadway has unwrapped in years".
If you've been envious of the throngs seeing the musical in New York, Chicago, London or Australia, then you'll be plenty excited that you'll now get the chance to go learn all the idiosyncratic details of Mormonism, meet war criminal General Butt-Fucking Naked and know the true meaning of the hakuna matata-like saying 'Hasa Diga Eebowai'.
Image: Ryan Bondy, Zahra Newman, Nyk Bielak and company in The Book of Mormon, AUS 1411. (c) Jeff Busby.