The hit and controversial musical "The Book of Mormon" opened in London Friday and broke sales records for the highest single day of sales, according to producers.



The musical from South Park creators which won multiple Tony Awards in the United States, grossed $3.2 million in sales in London, more than double the day-after sales from when the musical opened in 2011 in Broadway at $1.5 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.



The show's producer Scott Rudin, spoke in an interview to the Wall Street Journal saying it was "unheard of."



"It's an unbelievable result," Rudin told the paper Friday. "To be literally twice what we did the day after opening in New York is just unheard of."



"The Book of Mormon" received mixed reviews in its debut outside the United States.



"A decadent and self-indulgent musical which ultimately proves repellent" UK's newspaper The Telegraph wrote on its review of the show.



"The Book of Mormon merely flirts with blasphemy but there is something very winning about it," wrote UK's The Independent.



The Daily Mail's critic Quentin Letts wrote: "If you want to attack a religious group, why not militant Islam? Missionaries in central Africa include some of the bravest people in the world. This is a cowardly, coarse, cynical show, worth avoiding."



The musical is satire full of expletives that tells the story of two Mormon missionaries from Salt Lake City that go to Africa to win converts.



Writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone have the Mormons confront a thuggish one-eyed warlord terrorizing terminally ill villagers in Uganda in a world where AIDS is dominant and female circumcision rife.



The show, by Parker and Stone in collaboration with "Avenue Q" co-creator Robert Lopez, opened on Broadway in March 2011 to wide acclaim and won nine Tony awards, Broadway's highest honors.



The musical opened in London's West End theatre district on Thursday after a month of previews with a host of celebrities in attendance, including "Homeland" actor Damian Lewis and actress Kate Winslet with husband Ned RocknRoll.



Aggressive promotion, with billboards across London, and limited ticket sales helped create a buzz about the show at a time when theatres are using various schemes to fill seats and draw in new audiences.



Tickets to evening performances are sold out until June with a new batch of tickets released on Friday. The show's promoters are also holding a daily lottery which hands out 20 tickets.



Figures from the Society of London Theatre showed they earned 530 million pounds ($830 million) in 2012, a marginal rise on 2011, when attendance nudged up to 14 million.



Musicals dominated the West End last year with attendance of 8 million, a fall of 3 percent on 2011.



"The Book of Mormon", starring American actors Gavin Creel and Jared Gertner as the two mis-matched missionaries, received a mixed reception from London critics.



Theatre critic Henry Hitchings from London's Evening Standard newspaper said some theatergoers were bound to find the show puerile or offensive.



"Yet this is an affectionate portrait of culture clash and friendship, which parodies several classic musicals," he wrote, giving the show a four out of five-star rating.



"It manages the unlikely trick of rolling offensiveness and morality into a single package. For all its cartoonish devilry, it ends up feeling benign, joyous and even cuddly."



(Reuters contributed to this report.)

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