Broadway hit The Book of Mormon coming to West Midlands

They are both full of great tunes, sure, and both have a sense of humour, but one is definitely for the kids, and one is definitely not. One is about love and magical powers and sisterhood, and the other one seems, at least, to be all about shocking AIDS jokes and frogs.

Yet the surprising, even scary thing, is that both came from the same mind – that of the songwriter Robert Lopez.

“I mean, it IS weird,” chuckles the 43 year old New Yorker, pondering how the man who wrote ‘Let It Go’ also gave us Mormon’s ‘Hasa Diga Eebowai’. “I’m still trying to figure it out. What’s wrong with me?!”

Little is wrong with Lopez – at least from a showbiz perspective. When you have already become a so-called ‘EGOT’ – twice – a winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony – you can only be doing things right. His CV includes not only The Book of Mormon and Frozen, but his first great hit, the equally naughty Avenue Q, and also the beautiful theme tune to Pixar’s film Coco, ‘Remember Me’.

Next, at the end of this year, looms the sure-to-be-mammoth Frozen 2 (which he worked on, like the first, with his wife and fellow tunesmith Kristen Anderson-Lopez). Oh, and did we mention he’s the youngest ever EGOT too? “John Legend is younger than me, but he was like a few months older than me when he got it,” he specifies with a chuckle. “But who’s counting?”

Sitting in the comfortable Brooklyn studio he shares with Anderson-Lopez (their home with their two daughters is a few minutes down the road), the gentle and unassuming Lopez seems far from being a precocious showbiz brat. If he has always believed in his abilities, ever since he settled on his vocation aged 13, he still manages to seem politely surprised about the huge success of his shows – not least The Book of Mormon, which he co-composed with the dark geniuses behind South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Ever since it opened on Broadway on 2011, the show has become one of the most successful theatre events of the decade.

“The truth is, we had imagined it would be controversial, and we hoped that it would run a year,” he says, looking back.

But neither of those things are quite true: the love for it outweighs any minor controversies, and as it prepares to visit continental Europe and the UK, having conquered America, Australia and Canada, you could say it’s gaining nearly as many converts as the missionaries it so lovingly sends up.

Surprising as it may seem, The Book of Mormon is actually a great marker of Lopez’s work, combining classic song craft and a deep love of musicals with a fresh, contemporary, often irreverent tone.