DVDs: Dip Me in Chocolate and Throw Me to the Lesbians
In a July, 2003 column in The New York Times, drama critic Ben Brantley wrote that it "has the power to exhilarate that you associate with old-style Broadway musicals....startling appeal...genius....a work that is as populist as something by Rodgers and Hammerstein...finds the inner music in its cast of losers, just as Carousel found the music in a loser named Billy Bigelow."
And Newsday critic Linda Winer called it "sweet, funny, enormously enjoyable...the music happens to be gorgeous." The show in question is Jerry Springer: The Opera, and those comments make it all the more remarkable that a musical that had once appeared to be on the fast track to Broadway has now seemingly stalled.
Jerry Springer himself has admitted the connection between his internationally syndicated television show and the chosen style of the musical. Speaking of his eponymous program, Springer said, "The show has all the traditional themes of opera. The chaos, the mock tragedy, comedy, gender misidentification, the chorus, the chanting. We are an opera without music."
Which goes a long way toward explaining why Jerry Springer: The Opera, the work of composer-librettist-lyricist Richard Thomas not the American actor and librettist-lyricist-director Stewart Lee, was such an inspired notion. What better way to embody the wildly over-the-top, melodramatic emotions of "The Jerry Springer Show" than in an opera?
And in Jerry Springer: The Opera, the score manages to make Springer's trailer-trash guests sympathetic and human. Lee has said, "We hope the music changes the meaning of the words and dignifies, rather than humiliates or satirises, the characters condemned to mouth them....Richard has drawn universal experiences from the talk-show format-shame, embarrassment, guilt, love, and forgiveness-rather than a simplistic critique of the nation that fostered it."
Still, it's not surprising that the show, a grand-scale examination of the culture of celebrity, won acclaim in England, as the English have long enjoyed looking down upon some of the seamier aspects of American life. Jerry Springer: The Opera began life at the Battersea Arts Center, then became a cult hit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2002. For his first season as artistic director of England's National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner picked up the piece for presentation at the National's Lyttelton space in the spring of 2003, where it won raves and did sell-out business. In October, 2003, the show transferred for an extended West End run at the Cambridge Theatre.
In both its institutional and West End incarnations, Jerry Springer: The Opera was credited with bringing to the theatre a younger, hipper audience that took the show to its heart. The show won the Evening Standard and Olivier Awards for Best Musical. David Bedella, who played Jerry's warm-up man, Jonathan, won the musical-actor Olivier, and a supporting Olivier went to the show's highly active chorus, who egg on the antics of the lowlife studio guests. A live, double-CD cast album was recorded at the Lyttelton. And late in the run at the Cambridge, the show was videotaped, and the result telecast by the BBC in January, 2005, while the stage version was still running.
The pastiche score ranges from Baroque to rock, with classical, pop, opera, and musical theatre styles all making appearances. A good deal of the show's humor derives from its combination of scatalogical words with mock-classical music. While there are few clear-cut, extractable melodies or extended arias, the score is continuously intriguing. Key to the show's conception is the fact that the character of Jerry, created at the National and the Cambridge by American actor Michael Brandon, speaks but does not sing, while virtually everyone else sings but does not talk. With the exception of Jerry and Jonathan, the latter requiring a powerful show voice, the roles require genuine opera singers who are also capable of embodying the raunchy characters with which the show is replete.
The first act of Jerry Springer: The Opera is an imaginatively musicalized version of "The Jerry Springer Show," with three sets of guests. Dwight is torn between fiance Peaches, her crack-addicted friend Zandra, and a transexual named Tremont. Next up is Montel, who enjoys wearing diapers and is cheating on girlfriend Andrea with Baby Jane, who enables Montel's fantasies by dressing up as a little girl. Then there's the plump Shawntel, who longs to be a pole dancer, and must contend with an abusive mother and a Ku Klux Klan-member husband.
When tap-dancing Klansmen arrive on the program, Jerry's just-fired warm-up man, Jonathan, hands a gun to Montel, who intends to shoot into the crowd. But Jonathan jostles Montel's hand, and Jerry is accidentally shot.
The surreal second half, Jerry's fever dream after being mortally wounded, begins in purgatory, where Jerry is visited by former guests who bemoan their unhappy fates. Jonathan turns into Satan and orders Jerry to do a special program from hell. In hell, Jerry attempts to settle the dispute between Satan and a Liberace/Elvis-style God. The guests on the special program also include Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve, and Gabriel, all played by actors who were Jerry's guests in the first act. For its finale, the show reverts back to earth, with Jerry expiring in his studio, succeeded by a stageful of dancing Jerrys.
With raves from London critics and even from Brantley, Jerry Springer: The Opera was swiftly announced for Broadway. But the New York production encountered several obstacles. Putting a damper on things was the fact that the West End transfer run lost 90% of its investment. As a result, there was a dispute between the show's producers over the size and budget of the New York version.
And while the London stage production had played without notable friction, the January, 2005 BBC telecast was greeted with a storm of protests from right-wing Christian groups, who objected to the show's depiction of God and particularly to its Jesus, who sings that he's "a little bit gay." This controversy placed in jeopardy a proposed U.K. tour that is now back on, and was also said to have hurt funding for the U.S. production. In her review, Winer went on to note that "The outrageous religious bits are likely to fire blasts in America about blasphemy." A scheduled pre-Broadway run in San Francisco was cancelled, and talk of a Broadway engagement has subsided in recent months.
Rather bravely, Pathé has now issued a commercial DVD release in European PAL format of the telecast version that stirred up so much controversy. And as seen on the DVD, the tape is so good that it almost doesn't matter if Jerry Springer: The Opera plays here or not, so expertly has the show been captured. It should be noted that even with the endorsement of critics like Brantley, the piece would by no means be a sure thing for commercial success on Broadway. Jerry Springer: The Opera is probably not for everyone, and might inspire a cult following rather than a mass audience. In his less approbatory Variety review, critic Charles Isherwood noted from London that "It is hard to imagine this exercise in cheesy, vulgar cheek going down on Broadway quite as explosively as it has here."
As the videotape was made late in the West End run, it preserves the final West End cast, which differs substantially from the National Theatre cast heard on the CD. Most notably, there's a change of Jerry Springers: Brandon was eventually replaced at the Cambridge by David Soul, and if Soul looks and sounds a bit less like Springer than did Brandon, Soul is quite excellent in the central role. Bedella is terrific as Jonathan/Satan, and there is strong work from all of the singers playing Jerry's guests, especially Alison Jiear as the would-be pole dancer.
True, the second half of the show is considerably less gripping than the first. But Jerry Springer: The Opera ranks as one of the few contemporary operas with broad appeal, and on this DVD, the show is provocative and rewarding. One doubts that PBS would air the tape, but perhaps a cable channel might dare to do so. There's no word yet on a U.S. release of the DVD.
The DVD offers several bonuses. Although Jerry Springer: The Opera is in English, there are optional English-language subtitles. This is particularly helpful as the CD had no libretto. And there are two featurettes. A fifteen-minute documentary, "Story of a Musical," offers the history of the piece, from Battersea to Edinburgh to the National and beyond, and includes clips from early stages of the show. "How to Write an Opera" runs twenty-three minutes, and offers authors Thomas and Lee around a piano, offering an informal, whimsical, and ribald look back at four years worth of material, choosing at random from a box filled with various versions of the score and performing cut songs.
More unexpected is the full-length track of audio commentary by Thomas and Lee that can accompany one's viewing of the show. This entertaining and frequently tongue-in-cheek commentary includes the ordering of lunch and the taking of a phone call that informs the authors that the tour has been cancelled. While the tour would later be reinstated, its momentary cancellation colors the latter part of the commentary, with the authors explaining why they believe the protests by Christian Voice to be unfair.
Stories are told about cast members, and it's noted that the original cast members may not be happy that their replacements got the chance to preserve their performances for posterity. Lee admits to hating musical theatre, and the two point out moments in the piece that they still don't like and lines that Springer himself was unhappy with.