Jerry Springer: The Opera
Jerry Springer: The Opera is a British musical written by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, based on the talk show Jerry Springer. It contains irreverent treatment of Christian themes, extensive profanity, and surreal images, such as a troupe of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members.
Jerry Springer: The Opera
Richard Thomas
Stewart Lee
Richard Thomas
Stewart Lee
2001 Battersea
2002 Edinburgh
2003 London
2005 BBC Two broadcast
2006 UK tour
2009 Sydney
2018 Off-Broadway
2019 Manchester
The musical ran for 609 performances in London from April 2003 to February 2005 before touring the UK in 2006. It won four Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best New Musical. The first North American performance was at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The musical has been performed by a number of American regional theatre companies and made its New York City debut on 29–30 January 2008 at Carnegie Hall. Harvey Keitel starred as Jerry.
In January 2005, its UK television broadcast on BBC Two elicited 55,000 complaints.[1] The organisation Christian Voice led street protests against the screening at nine BBC offices[2] and announced their intention to bring blasphemy charges, due to the depictions of the Christian characters in Act II. The Christian Institute attempted to bring a private prosecution against the BBC,[3] but the magistrates' court refused to issue a summons, a decision which was later upheld by the High Court of Justice.[4] Protests continued at tour venues in 2006 and on the Internet.
(Sometimes the roles are shared by the person playing the first role; sometimes the roles are played by additional actors)
Synopsis[edit]
Act I[edit]
Jerry Springer's frenzied audience greets him as he arrives at his notorious TV talk show. His first guest, Dwight, is cheating on Peaches with Zandra. The three fight, and Jerry's security men break up the battle. Jerry is briefly admonished by his inner Valkyrie. Dwight is also cheating with a cross dresser named Tremont. After a commercial break, Jerry's second guest, Montel, tells his partner, Andrea, that he likes to dress as a baby and that he is cheating on her with Baby Jane, a woman who dresses as a little girl. Jerry's Warm-Up Man contributes to Andrea's humiliation and is fired. Jerry again wrestles with his inner Valkyrie. Jerry's final guests are Shawntel and her husband, Chucky. She wants to be a stripper and demonstrates a dance before her mother, Irene, arrives. Irene attacks Shawntel. Chucky pleads innocence, but Jerry's secret JerryCam camera footage shows that Chucky is a patron of strip clubs and a Ku Klux Klan member. The Klan comes up on stage, and the Warm Up Man gives Montel a gun. The Warm-Up Man jostles Montel, who accidentally shoots Jerry.
Act II[edit]
Jerry is found injured in a wheelchair, accompanied by his security man, Steve. The scene is Purgatory, a fog-enshrouded wilderness. Jerry meets ghostly versions of his talk show guests, who have all suffered unpleasant fates. Jerry tries to justify his actions to the ghosts. The Warm-Up Man arrives and is revealed to be Satan. Baby Jane asks Satan to spare Jerry's soul. Satan forces Jerry to return to Hell with him to do a special show.
Act III[edit]
Jerry arrives in Hell at a charred version of his Earthly TV studio. The audience is locked into cracks in its walls. Jerry reads cue cards produced by Baby Jane that introduce Satan, who is in charge of the proceedings. Satan seeks an apology for his expulsion from Heaven and wants to reunite Heaven and Hell. Jerry must faithfully read the cue cards, which introduce Jesus, the next guest, who resembles Montel. Jesus and Satan trade accusations. Adam and Eve are next; they are reminiscent of Chucky and Shawntel. They argue with Jesus, and Eve eventually attacks him. Mary, mother of Jesus, who resembles Irene, condemns Jesus. Everyone turns against Jerry, who hopes for a miracle.
God and the angels arrive and ask Jerry to come to Heaven and help God judge Humanity. He accepts the offer, but the angels and devils fight over Jerry; and the talk-show host finds himself suspended over a pit of flame. Jerry launches into a series of glib homilies asking for his life, but finally gives up and makes an honest statement that resounds with his audience. Devils, angels, and everyone sing a hymn of praise to life.
Back on solid ground, Baby Jane tells Jerry that he must go back to Earth. Jerry wakes up in his television studio, having been shot, his life ebbing away as he is cradled in Steve's arms. Jerry gives a final speech, and everyone is joined in sorrow.
Background[edit]
Richard Thomas's one-act opera, Tourette's Diva, was performed at London's Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) in May 2000 and featured two members of a dysfunctional family singing obscenities to each other. This led Thomas to create his one-man show How to Write an Opera About Jerry Springer, which was performed at BAC in February 2001.
In May 2001, Thomas returned to BAC with his show How to Write an Opera About Jerry Springer, accompanied by four singers in a tiny studio theatre. It attracted positive press and investment. Stewart Lee teamed up with Thomas, and the two began to write Jerry Springer: The Opera.
Productions[edit]
Battersea Arts Centre and the Edinburgh Festival[edit]
The show received its first performance, while still under development, at BAC in August 2001, with a cast of 12. It ran for one week, selling out. When the show returned to BAC in February 2002, the three-week run sold out in advance.
The show was then performed in concert at the Edinburgh Festival in August 2002, selling out. Jerry Springer came to see the show and endorsed it, stating, "I wish I'd thought of it myself."[6] The Edinburgh run included the introduction of character of Tremont – an amalgamation of two previous characters. Australian-born actor, Andrew Bevis, created the new role.
Following the Festival run, Nicholas Hytner offered to include the show in his opening season as director of the National Theatre in London.
National Theatre and Cambridge Theatre[edit]
The first fully staged production of the musical was performed at the National Theatre on 29 April 2003, with a cast of 33, including Bevis as Tremont and Michael Brandon as Jerry. It played to packed audiences and received favourable reviews. The show had its final performance at the National Theatre on 30 September 2003, before moving to the West End.
On 10 November 2003, the show opened at the Cambridge Theatre, with the same cast as the National Theatre production, and ran there until 19 February 2005, before starting a tour of the United Kingdom. The West End run was sponsored by British Sky Broadcasting. On 12 July 2004, David Soul took over the role of Jerry from Michael Brandon.
In 2004, a Broadway production was announced, and then cancelled.[7][8]
2006 UK tour[edit]
In September 2005, seven months after the show closed in London's West End, it was announced that the show would tour 21 regional theatres around the United Kingdom. Nine theatres that were originally scheduled to host the show pulled out after Christian Voice threatened to picket them. In addition, Arts Council England turned down a bid for funding, stating that the decision was based on the show's commercial pedigree rather than "pressure from extremist groups".[9]
The tour ran for 22 weeks, starting at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth on 27 January 2006. Immediately prior to the show's opening in Plymouth, it was reported that members of the far-right British National Party were taking part in a local campaign against the performances,[10] although Christian Voice claimed to disapprove of their involvement.
The cast for the tour included several cast members from the London cast, and American actor Rolf Saxon replaced David Soul as Jerry Springer. The tour had a scaled-down set and scaled-down effects as well as a smaller on-stage "audience".
New York[edit]
The show was supposed to open on Broadway in 2005; however, it was never produced.[11]
The show was performed in concert in January 2008 for two performances at Carnegie Hall in New York City with Harvey Keitel playing the title role.[12] The show was picketed on 57th Street by The American 'TFP', who cited the production's mockery of the Crucifixion, Mass, Eucharist, in addition to Jesus' depiction as "fat", and "a little bit a gay" as "blasphemous content".[13][14]
The show's first formal performance in New York City was 23 January 2018 – 11 March 2018 at the Off-Broadway Pershing Square Signature Center venue with Terrence Mann playing the title role and Will Swenson playing Satan.[15] It was produced by The New Group, directed by John Rando, and extended until 1 April 2018 with Matt McGrath taking over the role of Jerry Springer.
This 2018 run attracted less controversy for blasphemous content. However, the production still faced criticism, with the second and third acts being described as offensive only "to those of us who appreciate quality dramaturgy".[16] Another review suggested the Opera had lost its offensive and comedic edge due to Springer's diminished cultural relevance and shifts in the contemporary discourse.[17] When interviewed in 2018, Richard Thomas defended the Opera's profanity and blasphemy, but admitted to removing homosexual slurs as they were "unnecessarily aggressive".[5]
Profanity[edit]
The musical contains extensive profanity. It has been accused of including "8,000 obscenities"[38]—it is not known where this count originated, but the 8,000 figure is popularly quoted.[39] 8,000 obscenities over the show's 120-minute runtime would imply that there were 66 obscenities a minute, and thus more than 1 per second. Several publications, including the Daily Mail and The Sun, claimed a figure of "3,168 mentions of the word fuck and 297 of the word cunt". According to the BBC investigation, however, there were 96 uses of "fuck" and nine uses of "cunt". The BBC report said: "While a substantial number, this was not necessarily unacceptable in terms of late night terrestrial television."[40] The numbers reported by the Mail and the Sun were found by multiplying the number of cast members singing a profanity at the same time, i.e. the reported 297 uses of the word cunt is the result of multiplying the 33 cast members by the nine occurrences of the word.
According to writer Stewart Lee, there are 174 swear words in all.[41]
Television broadcast[edit]
Jerry Springer: The Opera was the subject of controversy when the BBC televised the musical on 8 January 2005 as part of an evening of Jerry Springer-themed programming on BBC Two. News of the screening had prompted TV standards campaigners Mediawatch to write a letter to the Chairman of the BBC Governors, Michael Grade, asking him to reconsider the decision to show the musical.[52]
On 7 January, the day before the broadcast, the BBC announced that it had received over 47,000 complaints about its plans to screen the musical – at the time the most complaints ever received about a British television broadcast.[38][6] Many commentators, including the BBC, attributed such a high volume of complaints to an orchestrated campaign by various Christian groups. Supporters of the BBC's broadcasting of the show pointed out that the supposedly blasphemous content was clearly presented as a fantasy in the mind of the dying central character and was not intended to be a serious comment on Christ or Christian theology. John Beyer, chairman of Mediawatch-UK, argued that the BBC should shoulder much of the blame for the campaign against the musical since they had promoted the musical as "pushing back the boundaries of taste" and "controversial" when it had never been intended to offend the groups who campaigned against it.
In November 2005, a DVD of the show was made available in the UK by Pathé through 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.[53] However, because of complaints by customers, Sainsbury's and Woolworths decided to stop selling the DVD. Many blogs and Liberal Democrat MP, Lynne Featherstone[54] condemned the action from the stores as being corporate censorship, something which both retailers deny. Most other retailers continued to stock the DVD.[55]
On the DVD's commentary, it was stated that it would not be possible to tour the show in the UK due to pressure from religious groups, but since the release of the DVD, the UK Tour 2006 went forward. The DVD commentary also stated that Stewart Lee was unhappy with an unscripted action by Alison Jiear. In the "Adam and Eve and Mary" scene in Act II, Jiear runs her hand under Jesus's loincloth, prompting a surprised look from Leon Craig, the actor playing Jesus. Lee said, on the commentary, "I wish she hadn't done that".