Storyline: All the guests on television's "Jerry Springer Show," who bare
their strange behaviors from the not too shocking "I slept with my fiancée's
best friend" to the "I enjoy wearing soiled diapers," sing their hearts out
to the famously unflappable talk show host. When he fires his warm-up
announcer, however, things get truly out of hand and he ends up getting shot
on air. Not to worry! The devil shows up to have him stage his show in the
afterlife.
The real Jerry Springer Show, taped in
Chicago and syndicated around the country and the world, has been revealing
the better-left-unrevealed aspects of the lives of its guests since 1991. In
2002 British musician, writer and actor Richard Thomas, who had made a splash
with a one-act comic opera called Tourette's Diva at the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival, teamed with stand-up comedian Stewart Graham Lee to write this
exercise in the outlandish. It was a hit at that year's Fringe and was
picked up by the National Theatre in London where it created quite a stir, transferred to the West End and then toured Great Britain. Everywhere it
went, it was the target of protests and demonstrations. A promised Broadway
mounting never appeared but it has been mounted in many US cities - usually
with somewhat less vehemence in the protests which always seem to accompany
an opening. Washington seems to have accepted its arrival with even more
equanimity, perhaps because the Nation's Capitol is more used to people
having their say here.
Studio's developmental company, Secondstage,
who did such a fabulous job on
Reefer Madness
last year and Batboy
the Musical a few years back (but blew it when attempting to
duplicate the success with
The Who's Tommy
in 2004) attacks this project with all the energy and verve it demands.
Christopher Youstra's eight piece band sits behind a glass-brick divider in
the wings putting out a satisfyingly raucous sound, which is to say they
rock while supporting the intensity of some of the stronger voices of the
cast such as Nansel, Curameng and Janine Gulisano-Sunday. The Springer
television show is known for its on-camera fights, free-for-alls that
delight a demented audience. Fight director Casey Kaleba captures the
essence of these explosions of anger for this production as the cast sprawls
across Giorgos Tsappas' recreation of the television studio set, complete
with the large exhaust fan at the rear (which, strangely, never actually
revolves).
The only way the title could be more
revealing of the contents of the evening is for it to add the word "rock" to
make it "Jerry Springer: The Rock Opera," but then too many would be
expecting the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber or Pete Townsend and the music
here is too sophisticated for that. It is opera in that it concentrates on
the music and not the lyrics and it requires the strongest of trained
voices, often in that diaphragmatic voice that can be hard to understand.
Unlike grand opera of earlier centuries, however, it uses percussion-heavy
driving rhythms and brassy jazzy riffs to capture a modern feel. At times,
it breaks out into plain old rock and the finale - when all thirty-four
members of the cast cavort in replicas of the blow-dried hair style Redmond
uses in his Jerry Springer role - becomes a bouncy curtain call in the mode
of Mamma Mia! (without the vari-lites).
Music by Richard Thomas. Book and Lyrics by
Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas. Directed by Keith Alan Baker. Co-directed
and choreographed by Matthew Gardiner. Fight direction by Casey Kaleba.
Music direction by Christopher Youstra. Design: Giorgos Tsappas (set)
Kristopher Castle (costumes) Justin Thomas (lights) Erik Trester
(projections, video and sound) Scott Suchman (photography) Melissa
Mallnowski (stage manager). Cast: Jessie Baden-Campbell, Florrie Bagel,
Mardee Bennett, Melynda Burdette, Ron Curameng, Rebecca Cznadel, Kerry
Deitrick, Jamie Eacker, Emily Ann Formica, Chris Galindo, Ben Gibson, Mary
Gresock, Janine Gulisano-Sunday, Alan Hoffman, Benjamin Horen, Kristen
Jepperson, Michel Kenny, Jason B. McIntosh, Jacqueline Maloney, Ryan
Manning, Michael Nansel, Patricia Portillo, Lawrence Redmond, Aaron Reeder, Jon
K. Reynolds, Kirstin Riegler, JR Russ, Bobby Smith, Dan Sonntag, Max
Spitulnik, Russell Sunday, Bitsy Vonmuffling, Bligh Voth, Weslie Woodley, Rachel Zampelli.
|
