Word: springer
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...ladies and opera go together, but rarely has so much weight been thrown around onstage as in Jerry Springer--The Opera. The musical version of the sleazoid TV talk show is filled with big people with big hair wailing about their big problems. A portly fellow with a luminous tenor confesses that he is cheating on his wife with a transsexual. A bridegroom-to-be strips off his clothes to reveal a diaper fetish. A sluttish young woman battles with her mother over her aspiration to become a pole dancer. Running commentary is provided by a studio audience...
...musicals that have burst onto the London stage in preparation for taking over the world, Jerry Springer--The Opera may be the oddest. The show, with faux-operatic music and raunchy lyrics by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, has been a sellout hit at the National Theatre since April and will transfer to the West End in October. Negotiations are under way for a Broadway production, which could arrive as early as next spring. A movie deal is already cooking. Co-producer Jon Thoday predicts that within three years there "should be 15 productions playing around the world...
...cats at least brought a little glamour to their garbage pile. The America on display in the Jerry Springer opera is a place where white-trash yahoos willingly air their tawdriest laundry in public for a few minutes of TV fame. The show is just one example of a wave of new stage works overseas that put the U.S. in a distinctly unflattering light. In Paris a "savagely satirical impromptu" called George W. Bush or God's Sad Cowboy has been drawing crowds since reopening in late Mayafter closing for two weeks when its writer-director, Attilio Maggiulli, was beaten...
...London's hottest musical is a send-up of America's looniest talk show. Of course, its creators clearly love their trash TV, even as they skewer it. The opera skillfully parodies the TV show's demented-circus atmosphere, and star Michael Brandon does a bang-on impression of Springer's smarmy solicitousness ("Chuckie, I sense you're not too happy about Shawntelle's pole-dancing dreams"). Even the backstage scenes ring true, with Springer trotting out knee-jerk defenses to his critics: "I don't do conflict resolution." At times the musical even makes you care for these...
...seem perverse to take a trashy TV talk show and turn it into opera. Yet composer Richard Thomas and lyricist Stewart Lee see the transition as natural. "The format of the Jerry Springer Show is very operatic," says Thomas. "You have lots of people screaming at each other, and you can't understand what they're saying. And just like in opera, the stories are very extreme." In the opera, Springer (Michael Brandon) must deal with diaper fetishists, tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members and finally even the devil himself. Reviewers have gushed, the show's run has been extended...