Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Hilariously entertaining stage comedy |
| Disadvantages: |
You need a seriously open mind to watch this |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
You've probably heard a lot about Jerry Springer - The Opera, not least of all the controversy recently caused when BBC2 showed a televised recording of the stage show. The biggest complaint by far was about the number of swear words contained within the show, followed closely by the religious morality of the production, but I have to take my hat off to Auntie, who stuck to her guns and broadcast the show anyway.
If, like me, you've not been able to work out whether to travel to the Cambridge Theatre in London to watch the stage show, you could sit down in the comfort of your own home and switch it off if you weren't enjoying it.
You're more likely, however, to sit and watch with a mixture of perverse fascination as the show opens before you, rivetted to your seat until the very end of this controversial yet highly entertaining and utterly hilarious stage presentation.
I would love to quote verbatim from the script, but with such lyrics as "three-nippled cousin-f****r" it's highly likely to have been filled with profanity and ultimately removed from the system by Ciao. Instead, let me guide you through the world of Jerry Springer - The Opera and right now recommend that you try to get to see the show before it closes on February 19th. (According to the show's dedicated website, however, it will begin a tour of UK theatres in October 2005.)
Like most good theatre productions, Jerry Springer - The Opera is split into two acts, the first depicting a Jerry Springer TV show, the second a Jerry Springer special: Jerry Springer In Hell.
As the show opens the casted stage "audience" are told the rules of the show: no heckling, no fighting and, most of all, no getting on the stage. The warm-up guy, played by David Bedella, runs through the rules before whipping both the cast audience and the live audience into a frenzy before introducing Jerry Springer to the stage.
Springer, played by Starsky and Hutch's David Soul, saunters on to the stage looking smug while the stage audience cheer and dance and shout "Jerry! Jerry!" to his approach. It's important to point out that the stage audience is actually made up of cast members, who act as the backing choir throughout the show.
The script is played out in song by everybody except Springer; one presumes Soul's singing voice isn't up to that of the rest of the cast.
Through Act One we're introduced to Springer's guests. First, Dwight, who wants to tell fiance Peaches that, although he's been seeing her for two years and they're getting married in two months, he's been sleeping with her best friend. While the two girls swear and abuse each other, Dwight drops his ultimate bombshell: he's been seeing somebody else behind both of their backs. Cue the song "Chicks With Dicks." Springer, as he would on the TV, simply stands back and watches the furore this creates.
Guest 2 is Montel, who wants to tell his wife-to-be that he'd like to be treated like a baby. He introduces his friend, Baby Jane, and another raucous song ensues: "Diaper Man." Guest 3 is Chantel: she wants to be a pole dancer.
Each "guest" is interspersed with commercial breaks, sung to by the audience, and throughout the whole show the warm-up guy whips the audience into a heckling frenzy as he believes his role in the show is much bigger than just getting them ready at the start.
Act One finishes soon after Springer brings the Ku Klux Klan onto stage to confront Chantel's boyfriend, a Klan member, and an amusing tap dance takes place before the warm-up guy, fired by Springer for his audience distractions, produces a gun that is then used by another cast member to accidentally shoot Springer.
Act Two starts with Springer's descent into Hell. Along the way he sees the old guests, appearing before him almost as the apparitions appeared before Scrooge, trying to teach him the wrong-doings of his controversial chat show. But before long, Hell hath arrived and Satan, played by the amazing Bedella, arrives and insists that Springer does a special show to help him resolve a trifling niggle between the Prince of Darkness and God. Most of all, he wants an apology from the great man.
Springer doesn't believe he can pull it off. "What if I don't agree?" He asks.
Satan simply smiles and bursts into song, ending with the lyric: "you'll be f****d up the a** with barbed wire."
You have to see it to believe it, but I must admit I was wetting myself with laughter so much I thought it was me that was going to need a nappy, not one of the show's guests.
Not wanting to be plundered in such a manner, Springer agrees to the show and begins a comedy parody of his normal transmission, only this time the guests are Satan and Jesus, with special surprise appearances from Adam and Eve and the Virgin Mary, who inadvertently admits that Jesus was born because the condom split.
In an attempt to settle the differences, an unannounced guest arrives: God. Apart from offering Springer to come and sit by his side in Heaven as a shoulder for the omnipitent being to cry on, he moans beautiful that his life as God is a hard one. After all, he has to listen to "billions of voices making all the wrong decisions, then blaming me."
This is, then, a show that you need to seriously open your mind up to before going to see, but I heartily recommend it.
As a tug of war ensues between Satan and God as to who is going to keep Springer, the show's host is locked in a cage and begins to be lowered into the fiery pit of Hell. Can Springer save himself by using his moral "Final Thought" to resolve the difference between God and Beelzebub? You'll have to go and see the show to find out.
Soul's characterisation of Jerry Springer is near-on perfect, from his stage demeanour to his habit of lifting his glasses to read the cards, but the star of the show for me was Bedella, who played the warm-up guy and Satan in the two acts. His characters were lively, amusing and entertaining and he kept the show anchored together better than any other cast member.
Amongst all of the debauchery and moral wrong-doings, the music of the Opera is a mixture of pop, rock, opera and tap but even sitting at home watching it on the TV I could feel the enthusiasm of the live audience as they clapped along to the rhythm and laughed with all the tongue-in-cheek jokes.
If you are easily offended by strong language - and I mean repeatedly strong language - or the controversial religious content that this show includes, you shouldn't go and see it, but if you can let your morals down for a bit and stop flinching at the f-word and others it is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining productions I have ever seen and I would recommend it to anybody.
As the show's guests would say, this was my Jerry Springer moment and I, for one, won't mind at all if I'm dipped in chocolate and thrown to the lesbians.
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