Why Does This Opera Have So Much Cursing?

Songwriters

Playwrights

Jerry Springer – The Opera offers pathos and profanity

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The brainchild of British writer and composer Richard Thomas, Springer was inspired by the infamous television talk show of the same name, which has been airing in syndication since 1991. “I was watching a particularly violent episode in the late 1990s,” Thomas recalls. “There were about eight people onstage screaming at each other. They were all being bleeped out and you couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying. I thought, God, this is like opera! I knew then I was going to have to write a show.”

Lest you think this is just Springer in satirical song, the musical goes to some pretty thoughtful, fantastical, and emotional places. The first half emulates an archetypal episode, with Springer’s guests — including a philanderer, a scatophiliac, and an aspiring stripper with a racist husband — airing their dirty laundry as the audience eggs them on. The surrealistic second act finds the genial talk show host in Hell, arbitrating between Satan and Jesus, with God, Mary, Adam, and Eve as his bickering panel.

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Although Thomas describes Springer as “a musical with operatic elements,” he leans heavily on the latter because it provides an intriguing dichotomy. “A character can be singing, ‘I hate you,’ but the music is saying, ‘I love you,'” he explains. “You are hearing two languages, which can be contradictory at the same time. I knew that the music would soften the edge and you’d get this delightful clash of joyous profanity.”

That classical bent works particularly well in the Hell-set second half. “When Jesus and the Devil face off, that’s pure Handel,” Thomas says before adding, “But I absolutely love musicals. My first musical was the film version of Fiddler on the Roof and my first live musical was Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre many, many years ago. It changed my life. So I’m quite happy flip-flopping in and out of classical and musical theatre.”

Given the source material and the interpolation of religious themes, it was inevitable that Springer would stir up some controversy. But Thomas believes the Christian groups who have protested and the theatre lovers who think it’s one-joke junk both have it wrong. “The note we always give actors is that you have to treat these people with utmost care and love,” he says. “If you just put a bunch of people onstage and laugh at them, it’s not funny. It’s just very mean, and I can’t see how you can sustain that for two hours. The thing that I found different about Jerry Springer was that he was genuinely nonjudgmental. At the end of episodes, his famous final thought was always, ‘Take care of yourself — and each other.’ I’m an atheist, but it’s like a Christian injunction. I think I’m on the side of the angels. It is a very moral piece.”

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Gerard Raymond is an arts journalist based in New York City.

Terrence Mann, Billy Hepfinger, Beth Kirkpatrick, Florrie Bagel, Luke Grooms, and Sean Patrick Doyle in Jerry Springer – the Opera. Photos by Monique Carboni.

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Gerard Raymond is a Sri Lanka-born arts journalist based in New York City who’s a member of the Outer Critics Circle and the American Theater Critics/Journalists Association.