Tomorrow is a latter day.

With a little dumb luck I stumbled into tickets to Broadway's hottest new show.

When I bought my tickets earlier this year, I certainly didn't imagine that a musical from the creators of South Park based around Mormonism would appeal to anybody but me. But lo and behold, just days after the Tony Awards I was having to seriously consider whether or not to unload my tickets for a profit of $500 a piece.

In the end, I made the somewhat indefensible financial decision of seeing the show. I guess my rationale was that the older I get the more important novel experiences are to me. Plus I earned bagging rights for the next few months.

After bearing witness to The Book of Mormon, I can see why this show got so popular.

As you might expect, the musical is irreverently funny. Most of the best jokes would not be quotable in the Arts section of the New York Times.

As you might not expect, it is quite reverential to the tropes of Broadway. Although the content is subversive, the form is not: this is a gloriously infectious musical.

Still, I am also quite puzzled as to how this show got so popular.

Given the press blitz that surrounded the premiere, I expected the show to pull its punches -- at least in contrast to the South Park episode. After all, one of the talking points in all the interviews was how even Mormons who attended the show thought it was funny.

I'm not quite sure I buy that.

Sure there are quite a few laughs generated from the fish out of water story-arc and the City Weekly reviewer got it right when he remarked that quite a few of these songs aren't all that far removed from what you find in Saturday's Warrior.

But a vast majority of the jokes come directly at the expense of Mormon faith. And Parker and Stone don't even take aim at the most obvious targets (polygamy or Jesus Jammy jokes): they simply present Mormon spiritual beliefs in a fairly didactic manner and let their intrinsic ludicrousness act as the joke itself.

If I were Mormon, I would probably be pretty bummed about the whole affair.

At its heart, The Book of Mormon seems to side with Nietzsche that man needs myth - whether it be Christianity or Tolkenism - for life and that any act of faith will be absurd. Thus the same manner of criticism could be leveled at any religion: one's spiritual beliefs will always be laughable to those who don't share them.

But I don't think The Book of Mormon would have been so successful if it were about, let's say, Scientology.

The musical can be both popular and transgressive due to Mormonism being so perfectly situated between the canny and the uncanny for Christians. It's the narcissism of minor differences: "We both believe that Jesus died and was resurrected but you believe that he once visited America... How silly!" Thus the lady two rows down from me could both laugh along with the musical but also be doing her rosaries at the same time.

That The Book of Mormon is able to straddle such a precarious line makes it all that more miraculous.

[Side note: the Salt Lake City set has quite a few easter eggs for the Utah crew but it also features an inexplicable Wendy's/Tim Horton's sign. Does such a location exist in the Mountain Time Zone or is this simply a heretical errata?]