Oh, What a Beautiful Mormon: Rodgers and Hammerstein, Intertextuality and The Book of Mormon

The 2011 musical The Book of Mormon has been widely recognized for its inclusion of intertextual references. From nods to Star Wars and The Lion King to Bye, Bye Birdie and The Music Man, the production fashions a bricolage of references to a diverse collection of existing texts from across a range of media. One primary source of such referencing, and the focus of this article, is the classic musicals of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Although the genealogy between The Book of Mormon and the often comforting musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein is not an obvious one, this article analyses the manner in which the production parallels both The Sound of Music (1959) and The King and I (1951), in terms of narrative, in the former, and in terms of orientalist depictions, in the latter. In doing so, it explores the production’s reliance on existing materials to put forward the claim that intertextuality is central to an audience’s interpretation and reception of this popular musical.