Trey Parker and Matt Stone are two lampooners whose talents for the raunchy, the ridiculous and the borderline-offensive have made them household names to comedy lovers. But can they hold a candle to that other pair of famous Broadway show-stoppers, Rodgers and Hammerstein? The Book of Mormon, which opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theater in New York City on March 24, is Parker and Stone's latest project-a big leap away from their sitcom-style, cutout animation cartoon hit, South Park. Some might be surprised at this change of pace for the duo, but in a conference call with justArts, they revealed a lot more sensibility in the direction of this show than in the cut-and-go style they typically use when animating South Park.

Indeed, the biggest question about this play might be whether the humor is anything similar to the TV show that made Parker and Stone famous. "I think in a lot of ways it is," said Stone, "but it is such a different animal, doing a Broadway show, because we are so used to doing whatever we want. In any [South Park] scene we can say, 'Oh, let's have a tank show up.' Or 'Maybe half of France shows up,' and we can do all that. . I mean, I think that if anyone saw [The Book of Mormon] and then learned that we wrote it, they wouldn't be shocked, but it also doesn't really feel like a South Park episode at all."

But will they stand out? There are many shows on Broadway that push the envelope for viewer squeamishness. When asked whether they had considered the atmosphere of the Great White Way when they showed up, Parker replied, "Well, we didn't really think about that when we were writing it. We've been writing this for 7 years, and even a couple years ago we didn't know when exactly we were going to launch this on stage. . We didn't really think about what else was out there. But we started from one place: We really wanted to do a story about these two missionaries that go to a place, and we picked sub-Saharan Africa in a war zone. . [We wanted them to] go to a place that's as far from where they grew up [as] they can imagine and confronted with all these new challenges of what they've been taught in their Mormon Sunday schools. . With our sensibility, we probably will be a little bit further out than most stuff on Broadway, but we didn't start in a place of doing that."

Critics from The New York Times and other media have already given glowing reviews to The Book of Mormon's preview performances. Now the musical seems set to take Broadway audiences by storm the way South Park stole the hearts of late-night comedy lovers. But it wasn't particularly intended to reel in a special type of audience. "The first few nights were definitely very South Park-fan driven," said Stone, "then the Broadway crowd started showing up. But they seemed to like it just as much and now we're really seeing a mix. We didn't sort of sit down and say 'All right, who are we doing this for?' because we never do that; we sort of do what we do and see who watches it. But so far, we're pretty pleasantly surprised by the mix of people that seem to be coming."

The Book of Mormon is going to be one of the highlights of Broadway this year, as a mix of South Park-style creativity, acerbic wit and the traditional showmanship of classic musical theater come together in a whirlwind of daredevil performance.