The Book of Mormon at a glance

Show
The Book of Mormon
Venue
Prince of Wales Theatre, West End
Address
31 Coventry Street, London W1D 6AS
Nearest station
Piccadilly Circus (2 min walk)
Genre
Satirical musical comedy
Running time
2 hours 30 minutes, including one 15-minute interval
Age guidance
17+ (under 16s must be accompanied; under 3s not admitted)
Dates
Currently booking until 5 September 2026
Schedule
Mon–Sat 7:30pm; matinees Fri and Sat 2:30pm
Price range
From £24 (typically £24–£115.50)
Music & lyrics
Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone
Book
Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone
Director
Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker
Choreography
Casey Nicholaw

Expert Review: The Book of Mormon at the Prince of Wales Theatre

4.6
★★★★★

LTH Expert Rating

Reviewed by the London Theatre Hub editorial team. Last updated: 1 May 2026.

The Verdict

The Book of Mormon arrived in the West End in 2013 carrying the kind of advance hype that usually sets a show up to disappoint. Thirteen years later, it's still here, still selling out, and still genuinely funny — which, given how comedy ages in the theatre, is a small miracle. Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez built a musical that takes the most disreputable comic tradition (South Park-style irreverence) and runs it through the most reverential form imaginable (golden-age Broadway pastiche). The collision is the joke, and the joke keeps landing.

What's unusual about Mormon is how warm-hearted it actually is, despite the headline-grabbing material. The jokes about religion, AIDS, missionaries, and warlords are genuinely transgressive on the page; in performance, they're wrapped in such affectionate showmanship that the show ends up feeling, against all odds, like a defence of belief rather than an attack on it. Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker's production is a precision-engineered comedy machine — every gag, dance break, and key change is exactly where it needs to be. The 2026 company, led by Declan Egan and the returning Conner Peirson, keeps the show as sharp as ever.

What Makes It Special

  • Tony, Olivier, and Grammy royalty. 9 Tony Awards in 2011 (including Best Musical), 4 Olivier Awards in 2014 (including Best New Musical), and the 2012 Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. Few musicals have swept both sides of the Atlantic this thoroughly.
  • The South Park / Avenue Q pedigree. Trey Parker and Matt Stone bring two decades of South Park's transgressive comic instincts; Robert Lopez (also the EGOT-winning lyricist of Frozen and co-creator of Avenue Q) supplies the musical theatre architecture. The combination is what makes the show work — comedy this rude needs craft this exact.
  • Casey Nicholaw's direction and choreography. Nicholaw won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Choreography for Mormon and has gone on to direct everything from Disney's Aladdin and Mean Girls to Disney's Hercules. The Mormon production is still his calling card — kitsch, precise, and utterly committed to the Broadway comedy tradition it's simultaneously sending up.
  • The 2026 cast. Declan Egan (Jersey Boys, Hairspray) takes the role of Elder Price; Conner Peirson continues as Elder Cunningham, with Regan-Bailey Walker (The Sound of Music, Evita) as Nabulungi, Tom Bales as Elder McKinley, and Kirk Patterson as Mafala. Over 20 of the company are new from 2 February 2026.
  • A West End record-holder. In January 2026, The Book of Mormon overtook We Will Rock You to become the 12th longest-running musical in West End history. It is now also the 16th longest-running production overall, with more than 4,660 London performances.

You'll love The Book of Mormon if you...

  • Enjoy comedy that pushes hard but lands a genuine emotional centre
  • Are a fan of South Park, Avenue Q, or comedy musicals generally
  • Appreciate precision craft hidden inside outrageous material
  • Don't mind being shocked, sworn at, or made to laugh at things you probably shouldn't
  • Want a hit musical that has earned its place after 13 years in the West End

It might not be for you if you...

  • Are easily offended by satire of religion or sexual content
  • Find strong language, gunshot effects, or strobe lighting uncomfortable
  • Are bringing children — 17+ is the firm guidance
  • Are religiously observant and would prefer Mormonism not be the punchline
  • Want a sincere, earnest musical experience rather than a comic one

Best for

  • Comedy fans
  • South Park / Avenue Q fans
  • Adults (17+)
  • Date night
  • Stag and hen parties
  • Repeat theatregoers wanting something different

Not recommended for children, religious traditionalists, or audiences sensitive to satirical content.

Critical Reception

The Book of Mormon opened in the West End in March 2013 to a famously divided critical reception — hailed as a comic landmark by some major publications and dismissed as overhyped or distasteful by others. Over the years that followed, the production has consistently held its critical reputation, with most return reviews and revisits awarding four or five stars. Verified ratings from major UK publications:

  • Daily Telegraph ★★★★★
  • Daily Mail ★★★★
  • Time Out ★★★★
  • The Independent ★★★★
  • Daily Express ★★★★
  • The Stage ★★★★
  • Stage to Page ★★★★★
  • The Guardian ★★★

Source: published reviews of the West End production at the Prince of Wales Theatre, 2013–2026.

Everything You Need to Know

What happens in The Book of Mormon?

The show opens at a Mormon Missionary Training Centre in Salt Lake City, where a group of squeaky-clean young men in white shirts are about to receive their two-year mission assignments. Elder Price is the most promising recruit in years — confident, devout, and convinced he is destined for greatness. Elder Cunningham is the opposite — awkward, lonely, and pathologically inclined to make things up. They are paired together and dispatched to a village in northern Uganda. Elder Price had been hoping for Orlando, Florida.

Welcome to Uganda

The pair arrive to find that the existing missionaries have not converted a single villager. The local population is dealing with poverty, AIDS, female genital mutilation, and a violent warlord who is trying to enforce his own version of religious law. The missionaries' answer to all of this — turn off your bad thoughts, in the show's brilliantly Gershwin-esque "Turn It Off" — is patently inadequate. Elder Price's faith starts to crack within hours.

Elder Price's crisis

Convinced he was meant for better things, Elder Price abandons Cunningham and the village in pursuit of a transfer. The Spooky Mormon Hell Dream sequence — a hallucinatory nightmare featuring Hitler, Genghis Khan, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Johnnie Cochran — is the moment his faith collapses. By the second act, he is no longer a missionary; he is a man trying to work out what he actually believes.

Elder Cunningham improvises

Meanwhile, Elder Cunningham — who has never actually read the Book of Mormon — starts converting the village by making up his own scriptures. His version pulls from Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Star Trek, and reframes Mormon doctrine to address the villagers' actual problems. The villagers, led by Mafala Hatimbi and his daughter Nabulungi, embrace it. The local Mormon mission's converts skyrocket. Then the senior missionaries arrive to inspect.

The pageant

The villagers stage a celebratory pageant to demonstrate their new faith for the visiting Mission President. What unfolds is one of the most outrageously funny set pieces in modern musical theatre — the villagers' enthusiastic, sincerely-meant, and entirely Cunningham-derived account of Mormon scripture. The Mission President is horrified. The mission is shut down. And the show pivots, in its final stretch, to its actual point: that what you believe matters less than what your belief makes you do.