Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Absolutely hilarious ! |
| Disadvantages: |
Not for the faint hearted or for kids ! |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
So you've heard about Jerry Springer the opera, right? And I'm guessing a lot of you had exactly the same reaction as a certain boyfriend of mine - i.e. "Well I'm not going to see it - I can't imagin anything worse! A combination of Jerry Springer and Opera - two of my most hated things!"
I got him the tickets for his birthday. He was gutted. In fact, we argued for around two days straight. But there was soon a great deal of word-eating going on in our flat, I can tell you!
I'd read all of the reviews of Jerry Springer the Opera as soon as it hit the West End, after hearing a few murmurings about it when the National Theatre decided to be a little daring and take it on in 2003. Being a member of what I thought to be a rare breed - the Jerry Springer loving Opera geeks, I thought the idea of the show sounded amazing, although the fact it was getting good reviews put me off a bit - if a music theatre critic likes it, can it really be as outrageous and politically incorrect as you'd think?
Winning all those Olivier awards (4 of them - Best Musical, Best Actor in a Musical (David Bedella), Best Sound Design, and Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical (The Chorus)) didn't help the thought that maybe the whole thing would be a little tame for me.
I was also convinced that the show was going to moralise at me a little more than I'd like - after all, it wouldn't be difficult! It seemed to me like there was absolutely no chance of a show being put on in the West End about the Jerry Springer show without containing a bit of a "Now kids, don't grow up to be a poledancer or a chatshow host" message.
My reservations combined with the aforementioned Jerry Spinger hating boyfriend and the fact I live in Leeds meant that I didn't get around to seeing the show until very recently. Realising that I'd already seen most of the other shows of note in the West End, I thought I'd give it a go.
I must say, I'm pretty pleased I did! From the moment the curtain came up to reveal the mulletted, leopardskin-clad, trailer trash chorus singing the immortal words - "My mum used to be my dad, snip snip", I knew I was probably going to enjoy the show.
The two halves of Jerry Springer the Opera are more distinct than in most musicals. Act 1 takes the form of an everyday Jerry Springer show - complete with the obligatory cheating partners, drug abusers, transsexuals, poledancers, hillbillies and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Act 2 takes place in hell, where Satan asks Jerry to put on a show with guests such as Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve and God.
Act 1 is where all the scene-setting takes place for Act 2, introducing the actors and, obviously, sending up the Jerry Springer show quite spectacularly! We start off with the Warm-up Man working the "Audience" (the Chorus) into a frenzy, resulting in a large amount of "Jerry Jerry"ing and a little blasphemy thrown into the introduction for good measure:
"He's bigger than Dave Letterman, bigger than Bob Hope, and give or take a few million, bigger than the f***ing Pope"
Jerry then enters to the chorus chanting "Lo, he comes", and introduces his first guest. I, being a devout athiest and a big enemy of political correctness, was almost at the point of wetting myself by now, absolutely astounded that anything this controversial and potentially offensive was actually allowed to be on stage.
The guests are then introduced, starting with Dwight, who is cheating on his fiance with her best friend and a transvestite called Tremont (who enters the show to the crowd pleasing tune, "Chick with a D**k").
We then cut to the adverts, which were one of the high points of the show for me - the chorus performing ditties about Viagra, Guns and Prozac.
After the "advert break", we are introduced to Montel and Andrea. Montel wants to be a baby and has been seeing a girl called Baby Jane to get his "diaper action". A grown man in a nappy singing about how he's at his happiest when he's "pooping in his Calvin Kleins" was not something I'd expected to see on a rainy Friday night in London...
After the second advert break, we meet Shawntel and Chucky. She's an overweight wannabe poledancer and he's an "inbred three-nippled cousin f***er" who hangs out with his Ku Klux Klan buddies in his spare time. Shawntel sings the surprisingly lovely song "I Just Wanna Dance" whilst spinning herself around a pole. Then the Ku Klux Klan come on stage and treat us to a tap dance singing "This is My Jerry Springer Moment", complete with burning crosses and everything, Jerry gets shot by a man in a nappy, and the curtain goes down on the first half.
I don't think I've ever been gobsmacked in an interval of anything before, but I couldn't quite get my head around everything I'd just seen on stage. Boyfriend was warming up to the idea that maybe it wasn't all bad, as it was quite obviously poking fun at Jerry Springer and wasn't particularly operatic.
Act 2 gets pretty ingenious on us. After introducing us to all the unsavoury characters of trailer-park America in the first half, the actors are recycled in the second half, which is:
a: Very economical - who doesn't approve of recycling?
b: Very clever - it makes the audience draw comparisons between the corrupt lot in Act 1 and the biblical characters in Act 2.
The Jerry Springer Show's Hell Special opens with the usual disclaimer screen, only instead of the usual "This show may not be suitable for those who are easily offended" stuff, it says "WARNING - This show may not be suitable for those with a limited knowledge of Judaeo-Christian Mythology". I, naturally, laughed so loud they nearly had to stop the show...
The gist is that Satan wants an apology from God for throwing him out of Heaven, he wants his wings back and most of all he wants out of Hell.
Jesus is the first guest, and is played by the same actor as Montel, the "Diaper Man". Nice. Jesus then moralizes a bit, talks about his crucifixion and is shouted down by Satan's "Whatever"s and the chorus's chants of "Jesus is Gay" (You see, I wasn't just being blasphemous and rude in my title - it was relevant after all!).
It all goes down the moral plughole from there. Mary is brought onstage to a chant of "raped by an angel" sung sweetly by the chorus; Adam and Eve are played by the same actors as Shawntel and Chucky, and are caught fondling each other in the Garden of Eden; the Angel Gabriel is played by the same actor as chick with a d**k Tremont and God is played by cheating bisexual Dwight.
Throw into the mix some well thought-out recycled musical ideas, such as the song "It Ain't Easy Being Me", which is performed by God, and the shortly after by Jerry, the fact Jerry unites Heaven and Hell in the end and the rather worrying similarities with a lot of religious choral work and the song before the finale which is being sung with Jerry as the subject, and we have a highly blasphemous, yet undeniably hilarious show.
The music of the show, though I've probably not mentioned it enough above, was definitely not what I'd expected. I'd heard that this show lived up to it's operatic name. This is true to a certain extent, but I'd definitely put it in the "Musicals" box rather than the "Operas" one. While a lot of the Chorus pieces do have an operatic flavour to them, the show as a whole is unashamedly musical theatre, although the majority of the songs do benefit from the classical training of the cast. The music of the show works very well as a piece in itself, and the fact that all of the characters (apart from Jerry himself) sing all of their lines can make it seem like the show is just one long track. There are a few "song" songs in the show, however, such as "I Just Wanna Dance", a ballad about poledancing sung by Shawntel, "Talk to the Hand", a toe-tapping number sung by transvestite Tremont, "Mama Gimme Smack on the A**hole" sung by Baby Jane and "I Wanna Sing Something Beautiful" sung by jilted Andrea. It's not in the individual songs that the genius of the show lies, however. It's in the clever construction of the first and second halves, the interesting comparisons drawn between the religious characters and the Jerry Springer show's guests, and the clever musical threads that run through the entire show. I've since bought myself the soundtrack, and it's not left my CD player all month - the music is what makes this show so appealing. There's something about profanities sung beautifully that makes them incredibly funny and a little bit "naughty".
The cast I saw performing the show were possibly the most well-chosen I've ever seen in a West End show. Usually there's a couple of weak links in the casting, a few people who don't quite have the vocal ability, or possibly even worse, have a distinct lack of acting prowess. I can honestly say that if I was casting for this show I don't think I could find a better, more convincing group of performers than the current cast. The cherry on the top of the icing on the cake for me had to be David Bedella as the Warm-up Man/Satan. The part itself is probably the best in the show anyway, but he added so much colour to it I can't even imagine it being played by anyone else. Other great performances were put in by Alison Jiear as Shawntel/Eve and Ryan Molloy as Tremont/Angel Gabriel. And as for the Chorus - I don't think I've ever seen such an involved and "in-character" Chorus in any production.
In conclusion, I'd highly recommend this show to anyone with my kind of sense of humour. I would definitely not recommend it if you are easily offended by anti-religious humour, bad language, bad dress sense, mullets, graphic descriptions of unusual sexual acts or the Ku Klux Klan doing a tap dance.
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