Jerry Springer – The Opera – The Pershing Square Signature Center, New York

Will-Swenson and Terrence Mann in Jerry Springer – The Opera at The Pershing Square Signature Center, New York. Picture: Monique Carboni

Jerry Springer – The Opera continues at The Pershing Square Signature Center, New York until 11 March. 

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Nearly 17 years since its premiere in concert form at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, later moving on to an acclaimed production in London, Jerry Springer – The Opera is finally receiving a full-fledged production in New York.

Two concert performances at the city’s Carnegie Hall in 2008 inspired intimations that a Broadway stand might follow, but that never happened. The controversial nature of the material may have stymied things.

The current mounting is an Off-Broadway production from the non-profit New Group theatre company. While it unreels in intimate surroundings, it’s a show of epic proportions.

It’s epic in the blasphemous hijinks and unbridled profanities of the book and lyrics by Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas. And they’re served up incongruously in an almost never-ending wrapping of Thomas’ inspired music, with flavours ranging from Baroque-like intricacy and sacred chorale to pop rock and vintage Broadway ear-ticklers.

Director John Rando has assembled a company of 17 actors, whose voices, often bursting into operatic splendour, are continuous sources of surprise, especially when matched with the salaciousness of the lyrics.

As they take on multiple roles, playing both television show participants and audience members, the glory of their singing – along with the vigorous playing of the four-member orchestra – is matched by the enthusiasm they bring to the show’s celebration of the basest dimensions of human relationships, as depicted in the long-running Jerry Springer-hosted television reality talk show.

Springer’s guests are demonstrative folks who come on stage to reveal the wrinkles and cracks in their relationships. Deep secrets are revealed.

A fellow might discover his girlfriend was really a guy, or a wife might discover her hubby had another wife or two on the side, with the woman or two on the side making an appearance as well. Abuse, both verbal and physical, often ensues.

The cast features Broadway veteran Terrence Mann giving the frenetic proceedings ballast as the ever-in-charge Springer, listening to and questioning his guests with a transparent concern that could give empathy a bad name.

Also prominent is the show’s warm-up man, embodied with scuzzy vigour by Will Swenson. Act I takes us through one of Springer’s programmes, with the guests’ confrontations, egged on by the audience, exploding into melees.

The guests include Dwight (Luke Grooms), who glibly confesses to triple-timing his fiancée; Montel (Justin Keyes), who wants to be treated as a baby, strips down to a diaper, and brings on his diaper friend, Baby Jane (Jill Paice), a woman with a silvery soprano who likes to be spanked; and Shawntel (Tiffany Mann), who wants to dance in a strip club much to the disparagement of her husband Chucky (Nathaniel Hackmann), who has his own weakness: he’s a member of the Klu Klux Klan.

A group of tap-dancing Klan members invade the stage, and the act ends with Springer being shot by the diaper man, attempting to aim at a Klan member.

The show’s second half finds Springer in purgatory, then in hell, and then coming back to life for the finale.

While in hell, Satan, transformed from the warm-up man, has Springer host a show with Jesus, Adam, Eve, and the Virgin Mary, seeking to iron out their problems with him and between each other.

But not before Springer opens the act with a production number, leading a chorus of Springer lookalikes and declaring: “I just wanna make you happy.”

The number, not in the original production, was added here to show off Mann’s musical comedy bent. It’s a lively start to an act that tends to get bogged down in theological confusion for a while, but snaps back to form with the appearance of none other than God (Grooms, getting a chance to show off his terrific baritone).

The non-stop movement of Rando’s staging keeps the thrust stage pulsating with action, further fuelled by Chris Bailey’s choreography.

Derek McLane’s set, Sarah Laux’s costumes and Jeff Croiter’s lighting do their part in helping to amp up the gleeful tackiness of this often exhilarating show.

With the advent of an United States President whose tweets show little tempering of language, the arrival on Broadway of the uninhibited Book of Mormon and the graphic descriptions of sexual abuse filling the daily news reports, the shock value of Jerry Springer – The Opera may have dissipated a bit. On other hand, the chaos of our days gives the show renewed contemporary relevance.

No matter how you see it, though, thanks to this sterling revival, it remains an audaciously entertaining adventure into sleaze punctuated with a touch of uplift as well: the tenacity of humans striving for attention, maybe even for love.

As Springer says in his final speech: “History defines us by what we do or what we chose not to do. Hopefully what will survive us is love.”

And who knows? Springer may even mean it.

Ron Cohen