An uncommonly tumultuous life

“Mormons,’’ now at BSC’s Stage 2 under the imaginative direction of Adrienne Campbell-Holt, is the product of a collaboration between Sam Salmond, a precociously talented 23-year-old who wrote the lyrics and book, and 29-year-old composer Will Aronson.

The musical is rudely funny in spots, ragged and glib in others, but there is raw anguish at its heart.

Salmond drew on his own Mormon upbringing in Pittsburgh as the son of a thrice-married mother, and if his childhood was half as tumultuous as what we see here, he deserves credit for simply surviving it, much less crafting such a compellingly original work from the raw materials of his life.

“Mormons’’ takes a deliberately stylized and over-the-top approach to the tale of its autobiographical protagonist, who is divided into two characters: a 20-something narrator identified in the playbill as “Me’’ (Stanley Bahorek), and a character identified as “Mormon’’ (but also referred to as Sam or Samuel a few times), who is portrayed by Taylor Trensch, from kindergarten age to early adulthood, when he finally escapes his Pittsburgh home and goes to New York University.

Mormon’s mom, called simply Mother (Jill Abramovitz), is devout and fundamentally loving but so erratic she makes Sophie Portnoy look like a paragon of maternal stability.