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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE BOOK OF MORMON ON BROADWAY. OPPOSITE PAGE: JOAN MARCUS (NICHOLAW) HOTTEST TICKET Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad in the NYC production of The Book of Mormon. come all ye faithful RELIGION MAY BE THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES, BUT ROBERT LOPEZ, COCREATOR OF THE RUNAWAY HIT THE BOOK OF MORMON, ISN'T PUSHING REHAB. BY THOMAS CONNORS C omposer/lyricist Robert Lopez may be most famous for his work in The Book of Mormon, the wickedly irreverent musical that arrives in Chicago this month, but he grew up loving the work of Broadway icon Stephen Sondheim. The show that got him going on his first breakout Longer & Uncut, the animated film from Matt Stone and Trey Parker. "It was an honest-to-God musical," says Lopez, "with a real story and charac- ters and emotional arcs and all the rest—plus elements of spoofing that kept the laughs coming. It was a big moment for me, seeing that." It was a big moment, too, for Stone and Parker, when these creators of 68 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM TV's shamelessly blasphemous South Park caught a performance of Avenue Q. Taken with the production's musical chops and its Rent –meets–Sesame Street sensibility, the two joined Lopez for a drink after the curtain came down. And in one of those moments that wouldn't be out of place in an hit—the puppet-populated, Tony-winning Avenue Q—was South Park: Bigger, MGM musical, the three discovered that they were all dreaming of doing a big show pegged to Mormonism. Then again, as Lopez suggests, this meet- ing of irreverently inventive minds may not have been so serendipitous at all. "Mormonism is everybody's dog to kick," he notes. "It's a young reli- gion and isn't protected by thousands of years of mystery and tradition. It's so easy to make fun of. But when people do, they don't realize Bible stories