Jerry Springer The Opera
Saw Jerry Springer The Opera last night.
The program and reviews suggested I might be offended by incessant profanity, blasphemy, freaky trailer trash or songs about poop fetishes. Nope.
What I hadn't considered was that a Jerry Springer opera would be much like a Jerry Springer show: chaotic in every detail. There's a reason I don't watch daytime television.
Overall: it was better than Wicked. Good production, fantastic choral singing, good acting, well staged.
It really was an opera, with each character following his/her own musical and lyrical themes. Like any "through-sung" piece, some parts strained to find enough melody for the words, but that's expected with opera.
But this was a Jerry Springer opera. Every melody and theme is quickly interrupted by another character's aria charging in like a flying chair. Few melodies lasted fifteen seconds before being replaced by a new rhythm, tune and vocalist. The effect is funny at first, but quickly becomes frustrating. Nothing is allowed to build and the popcorn chunks don't taste like much.
Where before have I experienced this rattling, depressing, unsettling, rhythm? Oh, yeah. The Jerry Springer Show.
I found myself looking for a story, or a character arc, or a clever song to latch onto - but the show kept changing direction, interrupting itself, introducing outrageous new details but dismissing each one for the next in rapid, pointless succession.
It was frustrating and unsatisfying - yet it also felt true to the source material. It truly was a Jerry Springer opera.
What Jerry Springer and other talk/reality shows offered was a new role for the audience. A story takes the audience inside to experience movement, adventure, romance, hilarity. Jerry Springer leaves the audience outside to point and laugh. To step inside the sad freaks' lives would be tragic and depressing. To watch from outside is emotionally involving, but the only emotions hot enough to arc across the gap are anger and scorn. This show offers both as humor, but their basic composition remains the same.
Jerry begins his show and introduces his typical characters - unfaithful husbands, fetishists, transvestites, etc. They scream at each other, they sing and interrupt, they stop for commercials. In the second half, Jerry travels into Purgatory and Hell to host a confrontation between Jesus and Satan that echoed the scorned-women catfight that began the show. The staging got better; the lack of momentum got worse; the level of chaos stayed the same. It didn't make any sense as a story or character conflict, but as a repeat broadcast of a white-trash trainwreck I'd seen earlier in the day, it kept me watching.
The program and reviews suggested I might be offended by incessant profanity, blasphemy, freaky trailer trash or songs about poop fetishes. Nope.
What I hadn't considered was that a Jerry Springer opera would be much like a Jerry Springer show: chaotic in every detail. There's a reason I don't watch daytime television.
Overall: it was better than Wicked. Good production, fantastic choral singing, good acting, well staged.
It really was an opera, with each character following his/her own musical and lyrical themes. Like any "through-sung" piece, some parts strained to find enough melody for the words, but that's expected with opera.
But this was a Jerry Springer opera. Every melody and theme is quickly interrupted by another character's aria charging in like a flying chair. Few melodies lasted fifteen seconds before being replaced by a new rhythm, tune and vocalist. The effect is funny at first, but quickly becomes frustrating. Nothing is allowed to build and the popcorn chunks don't taste like much.
Where before have I experienced this rattling, depressing, unsettling, rhythm? Oh, yeah. The Jerry Springer Show.
I found myself looking for a story, or a character arc, or a clever song to latch onto - but the show kept changing direction, interrupting itself, introducing outrageous new details but dismissing each one for the next in rapid, pointless succession.
It was frustrating and unsatisfying - yet it also felt true to the source material. It truly was a Jerry Springer opera.
What Jerry Springer and other talk/reality shows offered was a new role for the audience. A story takes the audience inside to experience movement, adventure, romance, hilarity. Jerry Springer leaves the audience outside to point and laugh. To step inside the sad freaks' lives would be tragic and depressing. To watch from outside is emotionally involving, but the only emotions hot enough to arc across the gap are anger and scorn. This show offers both as humor, but their basic composition remains the same.
Jerry begins his show and introduces his typical characters - unfaithful husbands, fetishists, transvestites, etc. They scream at each other, they sing and interrupt, they stop for commercials. In the second half, Jerry travels into Purgatory and Hell to host a confrontation between Jesus and Satan that echoed the scorned-women catfight that began the show. The staging got better; the lack of momentum got worse; the level of chaos stayed the same. It didn't make any sense as a story or character conflict, but as a repeat broadcast of a white-trash trainwreck I'd seen earlier in the day, it kept me watching.