There is a wonderful synergy between The Book of Mormon and the Australian company that’s brought the stage musical back to Brisbane and onto the stage of QPAC’s Glasshouse Theatre.

The show stars Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University graduate Sean Johnson in the vocally challenging lead role of Elder Price, a devout Mormon missionary who dreams of a glamorous assignment in Florida but is sent to Uganda. Johnson is shining proof that tertiary training here is producing world-class stars.

While similar-size musical productions have buckled under the strain of rising costs and have cut short or cancelled whole city seasons, there is a sense that The Book of Mormon will see seats filled night after night into October.

The irreverent humour and biting satire of the show is renowned, and clearly hit the mark with theatre-goers on opening night, as was proven by the smiles and laughter during the show and afterwards as audience members spilled out onto the streets, sharing tales about their favourite outrageous quote.

In the more than 30 years I’ve written about the arts, I’ve had only two jaw-dropping moments that I clearly remember. One was while seeing the movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. The other was while watching The Book of Mormon.

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Hell is a big theme in both. In fact, the song Spooky Mormon Hell Dream is one of the highlights for this giggling journo. The similarities of the movie and the musical in pushing moral comic boundaries beyond what is normally tolerated are no coincidence, as both productions were co-created by the South Park creative team of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez for The Book of Mormon.

To give away the outrageous nature of the jokes that made this salty journo blush would ruin it for those who haven’t seen them. Safe to say, as one of my dear friends discovered, this perhaps isn’t a show to take your mother-in-law to see.

A good portion of the fun in watching this musical is people-watching in the audience to see who is so floored by the scandalous jokes on stage. Faces drop, some cannot even bring themselves to clap, while others laugh uproariously throughout the show, even at the most inappropriate moments.

Parker and Stone’s upbringing in the Mormon corridor of the Rocky Mountains sub-region of Colorado in the US clearly provided rich fodder for the musical, and they are merciless in ripping apart the religion’s absurdities.

It’s all played with a sugary dose of high camp by this impressive cast. Sometimes the smaller moments provide as much mirth as the rapid-fire wit – all the weepy mothers at the airport seeing off their Mormon sons to their missionary calling.

In an impressive professional debut, Paris Leveque shines as Nabulungi, a kind-hearted and hopeful young woman who lives in the Ugandan village and who is deeply inspired by the missionaries’ teachings.

Leveque and Nick Cox (Elder Cunningham, Elder Price’s socially awkward, insecure and imaginative mission partner) delivered one of the highlights of the night with their take on Baptize Me. It’s as close to a love duet as this musical gets. Their singing chops and comic timing shone through, mining the double entendre to make it sound like a first sexual experience.

Augie Tchantcho as General BFN (I dare not spell it out!) excelled in bringing some of the show’s greatest shocks and heartiest laughs. The kind where you ask yourself – am I allowed to laugh at that?

The ear worm Something Incredible is a recurring theme – with Sean Johnson cleverly highlighting the tendency of those who preach religion to too often centre the highest praise on themselves, to great hilarity.

A hearty ovation at the end of the show in the new Glasshouse Theatre gave a fitting indication of how much the audience enjoyed having their moral boundaries pushed on a night out to the theatre.

The Book of Mormon plays the Glasshouse Theatre, QPAC, until October 4.

qpac.com.au/whats-on/2026/the-book-of-mormon