From South Park to Broadway

For two decades, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have shocked movie and TV audiences with their taboo-busting gross-out humor. Now they’re out to lampoon an entire religion with their first stage musical, The Book of Mormon. Could it be the most offensive show ever to hit the Great White Way?

The first sign that something unusual is going on at Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre is a short phrase, scribbled on a whiteboard in a second-floor office: ”Maggots in my scrotum.” The second sign is the guys sitting in that office — Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of the foulmouthed, button-pushing cartoon South Park. ”That’s a potential line in a song,” explains Parker, motioning to the board as he settles into a seat near Stone and Robert Lopez, the 36-year-old co-creator of 2003’s Tony-winning musical Avenue Q. It’s just after lunch, and the trio are making last-minute tweaks to their new joint venture, an original musical that’s being tipped as the most scandalous show on Broadway this season. The Book of Mormon (which starts previews Feb. 24 and opens March 24) is a cheery, glitzy, phenomenally blasphemous musical about two wide-eyed Mormon missionaries sent to Uganda. (If the title alone doesn’t offend you, check out our sidebar on some of the show’s dirtiest gags.)

But the creators insist that Mormon, which features a mostly unknown cast, will be right at home on the Great White Way. ”It’s a big musical. I think people will be surprised by how the form is very traditional even though the subject matter is not,” says Stone, 39, who notes that he and Parker, 41, are no strangers to musicals (1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and the 2004 puppets-gone-bad pic Team America: World Police both include original songs). ”We just have that sense of humor. We set out to tell a good story. And then we’re just offensive people.”

The duo also has a long history with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The 1998 film Orgazmo starred Parker as a Mormon missionary who becomes a porn star, and the religion has been the butt of plenty of South Park jokes over the past 14 years. Anticipating a media uproar over The Book of Mormon, the Salt Lake City-based church has already released a preemptive 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.” Fair warning, readers: In the interview that follows, Parker, Stone, and Lopez express strong opinions about religion that are likely to offend some people. But would you expect anything else from the guys who once penned a tune about wildly inappropriate behavior with one’s uncle?