A freak show in more ways than one, Jerry Springer—The Opera is a curious musical theater mash-up of sacred and profane elements.
Perhaps “trash-up” might be a better term, since the musical’s content is trashy and yet the work also aspires to higher artistic pretentions. For a while this singular show manages to be engrossing until eventually it becomes tiresome.
Before describing the musical and its flashy Off Broadway production by The New Group, let’s note its pedigree. Jerry Springer—The Opera premiered in London’s West End in 2003 and ran for nearly two years. Early in 2008, a concert version appeared briefly at Carnegie Hall, where it was picketed by Christian protesters. Several American regional houses also have produced it.
The musical begins as a madhouse parody of The Jerry Springer Show, the tabloid TV program in which people confess and/or confront dirty secrets. During the initial tell-all, a trailer park dude admits that he cheats on his fiancee with her best friend—and also with a transsexual. The next among several more guests to arrive is a businessman who craves to be treated as an infant and soon strips to reveal his fouled diaper.
Such squalid doings are accompanied by filthy language, fistfights, screaming spectators and—perversely enough—with handsome neo-operatic music. A mostly sung-through work stylishly composed by Richard Thomas, Jerry Springer—The Opera offers an ambitious, occasionally pretty score packed with driven recitatives, passionate arias, winged melodies, and Handel-style chorales that contrast wildly against the sordid goings-on that it bizarrely elevates in music.
Wait: There’s more. As the first act climaxes with a tap dance by a swarm of Ku Klux Klan members, Springer gets shot and awakens in purgatory where he discovers that his show’s weirdly troublesome warm-up man really is Satan. Soon Springer is dragged down to Hell to host a special program that (among a number of other Biblical figures) features God and Jesus, from whom Satan wants an apology. Let’s relate no more about the libretto, concocted by Thomas with Stewart Lee, except to note that these latter—and presumably more significant–passages of the musical suddenly go flat.
Is it that by now one simply has become fatigued? Trying to reconcile the musical’s incongruities of content and tone is exhausting. Or are the sung arguments involving Christian theology snooze-y? The score deflates, too. In the wake of its slam-bang first act, the musical wanes and does not coalesce into a resonant conclusion. Perhaps the shock values that possibly drove the musical into being a London hit a dozen years ago have degenerated by now into old news.
John Rando, one of the cleverest directors in the business, fields a fast-moving event at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s 200-seat Linney space, where the front row that edges the three-quarter thrust stage is occupied by rowdy “audience members.” Designer Derek McLane provides a replica of the TV show set that becomes electrified by Jeff Croiter’s multi-colored lighting and Olivia Sebesky’s hellish projections. Garishly attired by Sarah Laux, 17 committed artists hurl themselves into depicting their cartoon-ish individuals.
Terrence Mann smoothly invests Jerry Springer—the one character who does not sing—with an unctuous quality when he is in host mode that later curdles into wide-eyed horror as he goes to Hell. (Matt McGrath takes over the title role on March 13.) Will Swenson enjoys a devilishly fine time as Satan. Sean Patrick Doyle, Luke Grooms, Justin Keyes and Tiffany Mann are other stand-outs among the comical mob of losers and divinities. Performing beautifully under Michael Brennan’s musical direction, the ensemble gloriously sings every high and low note of this eccentric entertainment.
Jerry Springer—The Opera opened February 22 at the Pershing Square Signature Center and runs through April 1. Tickets and information: thenewgroup.org.
