Infidelity, drug addiction, transsexuals, necrophilia, rednecks, scat fetishes, sluts, obesity, rape, attempted suicide, murder and damnation for everyone. Is that really what you want? Is it really? Cause that’s what you’ll get at the Assembly Rooms every day at 2pm. Jerry Springer the Opera contains all this and much more.
The TV show and its celebration of the undesirables of American sub- culture are superbly brought to life on the venues main stage, where it thoroughly deserves its two-hour slot. We are the audience, baying for blood, fights and tears; we want freaks, morons, idiots and bigots; we want Steve, the show security man; and most of all we want JERRY, JERRY, JERRY!
This marathon show is mercifully split with an interval, and the first half delivers all the expectations, along with Jerry’s flagrant disregard for his conscience, which keeps interrupting his show at inappropriate moments. The second half, however, is where things really get interesting, as the ghosts of Jerry’s shows come to haunt him as he prepares for his own Jerry Springer moment; his greatest show ever, a reconciliatory showdown between…but that would be telling. After all, the aim of a review is not to spoil the story.
I should point out that this show is no off- the- cuff musical. The ”opera” in the title is there for good reason: despite the frequent Broadway inspired numbers, there is enough ”proper” music here to please all but the most hardcore of opera lovers, and although the script seriously tramples down the fine line between bad taste and comedy, the humour does win through.
Jerry Springer the Opera is guaranteed to become this years ”I was there” show, with the man himself rumoured to be making an appearance at some point. If that’s not enough reason in itself to go, the all singing, all dancing Ku Klux Klan is worth the admission price alone.
4/5
Simon Ferguson
