​I am going to make a confession that might get me banned from certain cultural circles in South Florida: I don’t like musicals. I don’t like the sudden bursts of unprompted harmony, and I generally prefer my entertainment to have a bit more grit. But several years ago, when the touring production of The Book of Mormon rolled into the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, I took my musical loving wife to check it out.

​I didn’t go because I wanted to see tap dancing or just to make my wife happy. I bought tickets because I was a massive Matt Stone and Trey Parker fan. I grew up on South Park. I’ve seen Team America: World Police more times than I care to admit, and I could easily watch it again right now. I figured that with those two at the helm, I was guaranteed to get a few good laughs.

​When people tell you The Book of Mormon is funny, they usually leave out the most important detail: it is also hilariously, relentlessly, full-on offensive. There is no soft-pedaling here. If you are a seriously religious person, this show is designed to test every single boundary you have. I remember sitting there in the dark, my jaw hitting the floor at the sheer directness of the satire.

​I don’t have an issue with offensive humor, I love it actually, I think as a culture, we should be able to laugh at absolutely everything. But the sheer audacity of what was happening on stage shocked me. About halfway through the first act, I looked around the room and genuinely thought to myself, “This is it. Half the audience is going to stand up and walk out at intermission.” Instead, the lights came up for the break, and the entire theater erupted into a roaring standing ovation.

​Nobody left. Nobody filed a complaint in the lobby. Everyone just happily queued up for their drinks, buzzing with a kind of manic energy, and filed right back into their seats for act two. It was a pre-pandemic crowd, back when people were perhaps a little less hyper-sensitive than they are today, but even then, it was a miracle of modern theater. Parker and Stone had pulled off the ultimate trick: they made something so deeply shocking that you couldn’t help but applaud the genius of it.
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​To this day, I can still recall the show’s two biggest musical numbers perfectly. I won’t even repeat their titles here—that is how profoundly NSFW they are. If you know, you know. It’s the kind of songwriting that makes you laugh hysterically while simultaneously looking around to see if you’re going to hell just for listening to it. That is the magic of what will be hitting the Arsht Center next month. It takes all the tropes of traditional, bright-eyed Broadway theater and weaponizes them. The melodies are infectiously catchy, but the lyrics slice through cultural colonialism, religious dogma, and human absurdity with a scalpel.