THE HANGOVER REPORT – It was worth the wait: The New Group’s sensational chamber-sized JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA (finally) opens in New York

Terrence Mann leads The New Group's production of "Jerry Springer: The Opera" at The Pershing Square Signature Center.

Terrence Mann leads The New Group’s production of “Jerry Springer: The Opera” at The Pershing Square Signature Center.

The New Group’s sensational chamber-sized version of Jerry Springer: The Opera (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) marks the anticipated New York premiere of Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee’s musical-cum-opera adaptation of the notorious talk show of the same name. The piece caused a sensation when it played London’s National Theatre across the pond  way back in 2003. Now, New Yorkers have a chance 15 years on to see what the fuss was all about (disclaimer: the piece did play a pair of concert performances at Carnegie Hall in 2008).

Jerry Springer: The Opera, a Book of Mormon prototype, is a curious beast; it both celebrates and berates everything it touches – opera as an art form, Jerry Springer the host, his offbeat guests. No one is spared, even God and the Devil, are ultimately subject to the work’s probing scrutiny. The result is a creation that finds the sacred in the profane, the high brow in the low brow, and more controversially in my mind, the inverse of these equations. Mr. Thomas’s score, once you get over the initial shock of Jerry and his guests crooning as if they were the Met, ambitiously and mostly successfully adheres to operatic conventions: recitatives, leitmotifs, and arias are all remarkably well-deployed.

John Rando’s authentically-sized version – the current production plays in a space that looks and feels like an actual television studio – pitches the show’s glorious contradictions just right, finding the humanity regardless of the absurdity of the moment. As Jerry Springer, Terrence Mann, is wonderfully droll, and as his nemesis, Will Swanson (who also deliciously plays the Devil) delivers a guilty pleasure of a performance. The rest of the fine-voiced cast, most of whom play at one point guests in the show, nails their respective moments in the spotlight.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA
Off-Broadway, Musical / Opera
The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center
2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Through March 11

Categories: Off-Broadway, Opera, Theater

Leave a Reply