The Book of Mormon (musical) with tyrannical, charismatic men with way too many children, our heroes... must confront a one-eyed, genocidal warlord with an unprintable name... That's enough to test the faith of even the most optimistic gospel spreaders (not to mention songwriters). Yet in setting these dark elements to sunny melodies "The Book of Mormon" achieves something like a miracle. It both makes fun of and ardently embraces the all-American art form of the inspirational book musical. No Broadway show has so successfully had it both ways since Mel Brooks adapted his film "The Producers" for the stage a decade ago." Jon Stewart, host
John Morris (composer) to Independence, Kansas while he was young, and continued studying piano. By the late 1940s, he moved back to New York City, where he studied at both Juilliard School and at The New School for Social Research. From the 1950s through the 1970s, Morris helped to compose incidental music and dance numbers for a number of Broadway productions, including "Wildcat" (1960), "Hot Spot" (1963), "Baker Street" (1965), "Dear World" (1969), "Mack & Mabel" (1974), and "Hamlet" (1975). He had written and produced his own musical, "A Time for Singing", released in 1966. Morris worked with Mel Brooks, starting with Brooks'