loosie: words: Theater Review: "Jerry Springer: The Opera"

Theater Review: "Jerry Springer: The Opera"

Redneck incest invades Shakespeare's land.

by S. Higgins | 2003.05.10

A balding man with a winning white vest-beer belly combo puts a fist in the air and yells into the audience “Dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians”. Leather clad women and mad men with mullets cavort, make lewd gestures, and blast out every four-letter word in response. All vocalization is in pristine operatic voices, and you’re watching this on one of the most notoriously highbrow stages of London theatre.

Jerry Springer the Opera has stormed into the Royal National Theatre, and has landed with a resoundingly shocking, slightly intimidating, and visciously successful thud amongst audiences. After an hour of cantankerous transvestites, obese strippers, and unmentionable fetishes (and that’s just the first act), you still have tenors ringing in your ears and the vision of the Klu Klux Klan tap-dancing across the stage. This is trailer trash gone Sondheim. One does not know whether to appreciate the camp contradiction or be offended, or view the whole experience as pure theatrical tripping.

Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, the show’s co-authors and directors, took a very protean approach to their masterpiece. They started by putting the grotesque and burlesque of the daytime telly show to music. They could have chosen honky tonk blues, or lovesick country, or hardcore rap; but they chose something that is a medium for heightened emotion, tumultuous love, and tragic defeat. A show characterized by themes such as “I Married a Horse”, “My father is my lover”, and “Bring on the Bisexuals” meets a genre normally for the wealthier, more discerning, more stuffy crust of society. Such is the genius of their choice – meshing two extremes of the class spectrum, without giving a toss for the after effects.

The first act is typical Springer format. A hyperactive warm-up man revs up the audience, the security guards are introduced, and all hail Jerry when he comes on stage complete with tortoise shell glasses and immaculate white shirt. This could be the actual show – the guests and audience members look like they have just walked off the set, and Jerry exudes the slick but slightly neurotic charm that only he can. There are catfights, talk-to-the-hands, and he-males. But all unrequited love diatribes, screaming tantrums, and bitch sessions are sung in shrill operatic notes – somehow numbing the shock value. Desensitization through classical vocals. When a large man with a weakness for wearing baby diapers stands up, strips down, and sings his undying love for his mistress who sucks a pacifier, you sit back, perhaps aghast, and simply have nothing to say.

Act Two brings Jerry to Hell, or a sort of Springeresque purgatory, after he has been shot by the diaper man in the line of fire (an assassination attempt on one of the Klu Klux Klan tapdancers). The whole second act is like a drawn out Springer final thought where he contemplates the morale and consequence of this truly insane experience. The devil and Jesus and eventually (and inevitably) God end up as guests on the show. Jerry is at the mercy of a very neurotic conscience; his past guests haunt him and play a little past-guests-attack. The music becomes more piercing and dramatic; the lyrics become more profane than the most bleeped version of the Osbournes. And it all concludes with a proper Springer final thought, and the staged audience whooping, cheering, screaming, and swearing.

Perhaps the most stunning element of an evening at this opera was the fact that it brought a National Theatre Audience to its feet, whooping, waving their arms, and chanting “Jerr-y Jerr-y”. The National, renowned for its high art theatre and often exclusive themes, has opened its arms to a beast. This can only be a good thing for theatre. Either your non-regular theatre goers are making an effort see their choice television show staged, all the while getting a bit of opera appreciation in; or the standard National Theatre goers, by reputation opera fans and trust members, are learning to let their hair down and whoop it up like the rest of them.