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
Broadway theatre of the minstrel shows), followed by the ragtime-tinged "" (1898), and the highly successful "In Dahomey" (1902). Hundreds of musical comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 1900s made up of songs written in New York's Tin Pan Alley involving composers such as Gus Edwards, John Walter Bratton, and George M. Cohan ("Little Johnny Jones" (1904), "45 Minutes From Broadway" (1906), and "George Washington Jr." (1906)). Still, New York runs continued to be relatively short, with a few exceptions, compared with London runs, until World War I. A few very successful British musicals continued to achieve great