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Jerry Springer The Opera at The New Group

"What the fuck?" isn't just a lyric that's repeated over and over again in Jerry Springer the Opera but it pretty much sums up my exact feelings about the musical.

Now I admit the humor of the show is not the type I typically find funny. I am not one for vulgarity or gross-out humor. But I've seen my fair share of Jerry Springer over the years, so I wasn't surprised at how vulgar the musical was. The surprising thing is that The New Group decided to even produce this show in 2018, fourteen years after it won Best Musical at the Oliviers, when Jerry Springer (and talk shows) have become culturally irrelevant. With social media and the internet and the ease in which someone or something can go "viral," we don't need syndicated talk shows to gain our fifteen minutes of fame. The piece doesn't even play well as a period piece; it is simply dated.

Quite frankly, the material in Jerry Springer the Opera isn't even shocking, it's just in really, really poor taste. Jokes about transgendered people are never funny but hearing "chicks with dicks" over and over again in a theater whose bathrooms encourage people to use the facility they are most comfortable using seems hypocritical. And after yet another school shooting, nobody attached to the production thought, "hey, let's cut out this joke about a kid bringing a gun to school." Sorry but that's something that probably shouldn't be joked about, right? And, although this is a personal preference, don't get me started on the KKK number that ends act one. The KKK always makes me uncomfortable (I mean it should make everyone uncomfortable, right?) and I'd rather not watch them tap dance on stage.

(There's also a whole slew of offensive jokes towards Christianity in the second act, none worse than one that insinuates that Jesus has gay tendencies.)

The problem isn't necessarily these jokes, especially when someone else could just be like, "oh, lighten up." That's fine. I laughed until I cried during The Book of Mormon, and that can certainly offend. No, the problem is that the show isn't as clever or subversive as it should be. The jokes are straight-forward and not ironic in any way. The show has nothing to say. It throws in a few moments that attempt to go deeper; is Springer exploiting these people, or are they just exercising their own free will? It's a valiant attempt but it doesn't go far enough. The characters aren't developed enough to really care about them or understand their motivation. They don't actually have any motivation on the page. They're the cliched scorned lovers, exotic dancers, adult babies--exactly who you'd see on an episode of Jerry Springer. The first act of the musical is one joke that goes on for an hour. All of the music sounds the same, with one standout "I Just Want to Dance." (There is one unfortunate sequence about a man who likes to wear diapers that drags and drags and drags.)

And then the second act happens.

Now I imagine the authors of this show really thought they were being clever by sending Jerry Springer to Purgatory, and then to Hell, to deal with Satan. And honestly, that is an interesting idea. If Springer were in Hell to be punished for exploiting people on his show, if he has any accountability. But no. Instead Satan drags Springer to Hell because he's wants an apology from Jesus and he wants to unite Heaven and Hell. Why, I don't really know. The whole sequence is clumsy due to the limitations of the Linney Theater stage (Hell apparently looks just like Purgatory, which looks just like the Jerry Springer Show set) and it's just a rehashing of the same "tricks" from act one. Boy, does it get tedious. They're trying to be shocking by throwing in biblical figures, including Jesus but by that point I was over the whole thing. Everything may have been shocking in 2004 but in 2018, it was just obnoxious. It's a tasteless show that doesn't even get campy enough.

I'll reiterate my initial question: why did The New Group even consider producing this in 2018? There was a reason this hasn't been produced in New York before now.  Did anyone think we needed this production of a musical that is essentially a 2:20 skit?

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