High art meets trash TV in 'Jerry Springer -The Opera'

EDINBURGH, Scotland

One of the hottest tickets at this year's Edinburgh Fringe festival features expletive-spitting louts, a man clad only in a diaper, a talk-show host and Satan. Naturally, It's an opera.

"Jerry Springer: The Opera" is selling out its daily performances -- and generating talk of a transfer to London's West End -- with its collision of high art and trash TV.

Britain's Observer newspaper called it "very funny, very foul-mouthed, superbly sung"; the Sunday Times deemed it "splendidly disrespectful." Audiences in Edinburgh's ornate Assembly Rooms howl with laughter from the moment the operatic chorus appears -- intoning "My Mom used to be my Dad" and emitting a melodic stream of unprintable, four-letter asides.

But the show's creators insist it's no joke.

"You think it's going to be some sort of knockabout burlesque, but it starts to affect you emotionally," said Stewart Lee, the opera's London-based director and co-writer.

That may seem an odd claim for a show that features a chorus line of dancing Ku Klux Klansmen and an all-singing cast of adulterous spouses, strippers, crack addicts and transsexuals.

But Lee and Richard Thomas, the show's composer and lyricist, insist Springer is a fit subject for opera.

Thomas is an unabashed fan of the Chicago-based show that has explored topics such as "I married a horse" and "I refuse to wear clothes," and pits trash-talking guests against catcalling audiences.

"One night I was watching the show, and I realized there were eight people screaming at each other, a chorus baying for blood, and I thought -- that's opera," Thomas said.

His dual aim, he said, is to reclaim opera for a mass audience and to celebrate the king of tabloid TV, whose syndicated program was recently named the worst television show in history by the editors of TV Guide.

Last month, the real-life Springer was sued by the son of a former guest, who was killed by her ex-husband hours after the airing of an episode in which the couple appeared.

"I like the moral dilemmas the Jerry Springer show poses for the people who watch it and the people who are on it," said Thomas, whose other work includes the opera "Tourette's Diva." "It's a show filled with despair, but it's a huge commercial success. People are ashamed to admit they watch it, but it's a success. It's shameless and it's shameful. That's great for opera." Despite the opera's cavalcade of kitsch, it treats those moral issues seriously, if not subtly. In the second half, Jerry descends into hell, faces the tragic fallout from his guests' on-screen confrontations. "A person with less broadcasting experience might feel responsible," he quips and attempts to reconcile Jesus and Satan.

"One of the few negative reviews we've had said the show missed its satirical target," said Lee, better known in Britain as a comedian and comedy writer. "Well, it's not meant to be a satire.

"It needs to be staged with the same kind of dignity with which you'd do 'Parsifal.'" Staged simply and performed with gusto by a cast of 21 singers, the show has a hummable score that touches on everything from Wagner to jazz to Broadway musicals.

While purists say it's not really an opera -- the character of Jerry doesn't sing -- the piece is operatic in its sweeping emotions and use of familiar archetypes.

"When Wagner wrote his operas, the myths he wrote about were common currency," Lee said. This show, he said, is "an opera that people can relate to, about a subject they can understand." Audiences so far -- in Edinburgh and in earlier workshop runs in London -- have been enthusiastic.

So have Britain's theater critics. But Thomas and Lee are slightly apprehensive about Springer's own reaction.

The pair have met Springer -- "He said, 'I hear I get shot at the end of the first act,'" recalled Lee -- and say he was sanguine about the use of his name and image. Springer is coming to Edinburgh for a television festival later this month and has reportedly said he wants to see the show.

"I hope he'll be flattered by the high level of seriousness that we've applied," Lee says. "I hope he won't be annoyed." Thomas said he has always believed Springer would like the opera.

"I kind of think of Jerry Springer as Mephistopheles. He's a chancer -- but he doesn't actually judge his guests. I think he's on the side of the angels," Thomas said.

"That is," he concedes, "a minority view."