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LETTER from LONDON |
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ART SPRINGS UP IN THE LEAST LIKELY PLACES |
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Ever vulgar Jerry Springer
now has been set to music
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
The five seconds its takes to grab the zapper provides more than you wanted to know about Jerry Springer’s guests and their repulsive exhibitionism. Yet I came out of “Jerry Springer--The Opera” in London the other day exhilarated. This show takes bad television and turns it into some kind of art.
I advise any American who plans a London visit and still has a sense of humor to get tickets to this outrageously funny and oddly beautiful spectacle. See it here, now, because it will never play Broadway, much less the Midwest, in its current form.
The English have a way with anarchic sex and religious humor that most Americans cannot quite stomach. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the Monty Python troupe and others pushed at the boundaries of whatever you choose to call their work--parody, satire, humor, belly laughs, cheap shots. In my opinion, we owe them all a big thanks.
It was in that tradition that the makers of the Springer “opera” got moving a couple of years ago, finally constructing this wonderful musical evening and now offering it to full houses at the National Theatre in London’s South Bank Centre.
I have rarely seen a theater so charged with anticipation. Ten minutes before curtain, every seat full, three black-clad bouncers took up positions in front of the audience, glowering at anyone inclined to mount the stage or throw things. You almost think you are on the set of the notorious show. But as the curtain rises, the 30-member cast opens with a beautiful choral work reminiscent of a Bach cantata that is however laced with trailer-trash profanity. We are off and running.
Guests then appear on stage to sing their stories--so awful they could be straight from old Springer scripts--each performed in a more stunning operatic voice than the one before. Many are obese or misshapen. A big black lover played by Benjamin Lake confesses to his fiancée that when he says “baby” he really means “baby,” and strips down to a baggy diaper. Worse, he wants her to be his wiper. But for the words, he could be doing an aria from Rigoletto.
Other songs celebrate the slut junky, the crack whore, and my personal favorite, being from Indiana, “Three-nipple cousin-fucker.”
Guests on the show are given Springerish names such as Dwight, Dwayne, Li’l Pookie, Zandra, Shawntel, Montel, Baby Jane, Chucky and Peaches. Some of the lyrics are difficult to follow, making you yearn to see it again or at least buy the book.
The cast is a nice blend of British and American veterans of big productions ranging from Shakespeare to Les Miserables. American David Bedella is simply riveting as the warmup man and, in Act 2, as the devil. Brooklynite Michael Brandon plays an eerily believable Jerry Springer, complete with his famous catchlines tossed repeatedly to the guests, “I’m confused,” “Help me out here,” arms folded thoughtfully.
In the rapid repartee, they have even added a new reference to Springer’s suitability for the U.S. Senate. (By the way, if he decides to run, and if he wins, I plan to turn in my U.S. passport and become a Frenchman.)
The first act ends with a crazy song and dance with full chorus dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits. This may be a tribute to Mel Brooks, who has made everyone from nuns to Nazis dance to his music. And the act ends with a pistol shot accidentally killing Jerry.
Act 2 opens as a dead Jerry is taken down to hell, the superb Bedella now playing the devil. A deadpan notice appears on a screen warning that you might not understand this part if you are not familiar with “Judeo-Christian mythology.” Very Monty Python, as in “The BBC apologise for that sketch.”
Director Stewart Lee’s stagecraft is impressive, with flames and mist belching. You can almost smell the sulphur.
In this setting, Satan is a guest and Jerry is instructed to coax apologies from God, Adam and Eve, Jesus and the Virgin Mary for their unkind comments about Him over the years. Jerry can’t deliver, loses his temper and shouts at a nearly nude Jesus, “Grow up and put some clothes on!” Next, God sings a catchy tune called “It Ain’t Easy Being Me.”
For parody lovers, this is a triple hit. First the actual show is a parody of low-life television. Second, this production is a parody of that parody. Third, the chosen format is a parody of the American musical combining grand and happy music with pathetic, profane and sometimes obscene lyrics.
The clever guys who put this together were originally intrigued by the creatures on the real television version. Explaining his eventual format, Composer and lyricist Richard Thomas summed up his view of the TV show: "It's got tragedy. It's got violence. There are people screaming at each other and you can't understand what they're saying. It's perfect for opera."
“Jerry” has been around in London in various forms for two and a half years. Thomas originally called it “How to Write an Opera about Jerry Springer.” It was then a one-man, one-act play with Thomas at the piano singing all the parts. Subsequent opportunities allowed him to expand it, and he added co-writer Stewart Lee, now director, to sharpen up the words.
Springer himself, born in London, has taken the show in good humor. He attended a performance a year ago at the Edinburgh Festival. When he came backstage the producers approached him saying, “Don’t sue us. Don’t sue us.” In fact he was bemused, and wished them well. The program quotes him as having said, “Good Lord. I’ve got culture. I’m an opera. Who would have thought?”
The National Theatre sellout has made the show one of London’s hottest tickets this summer. On Oct. 14 it joins the big time by transferring to the West End Cambridge Theatre. All this attention has attracted New York money for a possible Broadway run, although a rewrite would surely be required.
A month ago The New York Times reported the three major Broadway theatre owners--the Shuberts, the Nederlanders and Jujamcyn--as showing interest.
©2003 by Michael Johnson. The illustrations are courtesy of London's National Theatre website.
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