Jerry
Springer: The Opera
Music & lyrics by Richard Thomas; book & additional lyrics by
Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas
Directed by John Rando; choreographed by Chris Bailey
Performances through April 1, 2018
The New Group, Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West
42nd Street, New York, NY
thenewgroup.org
Will Swenson and Terrence Mann in Jerry Springer: The Opera (photo: Monique Carboni) |
So to make a parody called Jerry
Springer: The Opera is the height of obviousness—and pointlessness. To
marry lowbrow with (supposed) highbrow, composer-lyricist Richard Thomas and lyricist
Stewart Lee went all in: lines like “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the
fucking fuck?” are intoned by an angelic-sounding chorus, literally mating the
sacred and the profane. And having Jerry get shot during one of his shows,
descend into a hellish purgatory where he’s met by Satan and told to do a show
for Satan’s benefit to avoid an eternity of hellfire, is an idea as unoriginal
as it is awful.
Right from the beginning, non-stop cursing
is set to heavenly music (the songs are listenable but blandly opera-lite) and the
show devolves into self-satisfied nastiness, with an already riled-up audience
egged on by Jerry’s crazed warm-up man, as the host himself shepherds the
sordid enterprise. A little of this goes a very long way: the first act
comprises Springer Show guests with hidden
secrets like a husband who wears diapers and admits to his wife that taking a
shit turns him on, or a plain wife who secretly wants to be a pole dancer.
Actual episodes of The Jerry Springer
Show didn’t put on airs about such people, instead taking them at face
value. Here, condescension is present from the start, and a repetitive first
act ends rather desperately with a Ku Klux Klan dance number done better (and funnier)
by Mel Brooks’ Nazis in The Producers.
The second act, in which Satan
demands an apology for being tossed out of paradise, leading to appearances by Jesus,
Mary and even God Almighty, might be blasphemous to some, but it’s sophomoric
and juvenile to most, never approaching the sinful satire it aims for, instead
lazily relying on its one-note, single-joke conceit to stretch itself past the
two-hour mark. In 2003 when this premiered—or 2008, when it was performed at
Carnegie Hall—Jerry Springer: The Opera
might have seemed daring or prescient. But now—in a world dominated by a
benighted and dangerous simpleton in the White House—the show has been outstripped
by reality.
John Rando’s smart staging features
Derek McLane’s typically superior set, which cleverly bleeds into the theater
itself for some semi-audience participation. Effortlessly playing multiple
roles is a dazzling cast of 18, whose voices soar into the stratosphere. While Terrence
Mann’s Jerry (a largely non-singing role, with a forgettable ballad thrown in)
makes Springer more than just a caricatured ringmaster, Will Swenson, as
Jerry’s Warm-Up Man and Satan, is having so much wild-eyed fun—he looks
unsettlingly like Charles Manson, maniacal stare and all—that it’s easy to go
along for the ride, bumpy as it ultimately is.
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