• Showing at: Cambridge Theatre, London. UK.
• Season: August 2003 - Infinity and Beyond?
• Buy Tickets
• Entertainment Rating: 99%
• Drama Rating: 94%

Hoorah for the person who invented the f-word! Who would've thought it would've led to an opera... about Jerry Springer... And also the funniest theatre event to have ever hit the West End.

There is no doubt about the brilliance of this musical. One of the easy things to assume about it is that its just a bunch of trashy, cheap joke scenes thrown together out of nowhere with some music accompanying it. You couldn't be more wrong! One of the most striking things about it is how it is literally comically perfect in everyway! The music, lyrics, and dances were so precisely coordinated to produce scenes that'll seriously leave you rolling all over the floor laughing. It was hard when trying to give this a drama rating, but taking into account how absolutely well written it was, I had to give it 94% - it was truly artistic. On the surface, throwing the f-word into random sentences may seem tacky, but the lyrics were so well formulated that every time it was said it left you in stitches.

Jerry Springer the Opera breaks all rules of the theatre, of morality, of reality! You don't laugh simply because the lines are funny, but because they're outrageous! You're laughing at the fact that somebody was courageous enough to go that extra length - to break the rules. It's that sense of "I can't believe he just said what he said!" that makes it hilarious and something you seriously have to witness to truly appreciate. The religious satires in it, for example, are so blunt and over-the-top that you can't help but laugh at the fact that somebody had the guts to write it. I guess you could say that Jerry Springer the Opera says all the things we've always wanted to say, but never had the guts to say. Indeed, you could liken Richard Thomas to the Christopher Marlowe of the 21st century.

Deliciously offensive and overly outrageous; Tap-dancing KKK members, overweight strippers, a gay Jesus, and a raped-by-God-Virgin-Mary are just a few of the crazy encounters you'll get to laugh at. I'm going to leave the rest for you to see - because you seriously haven't lived until you've seen it

Review by Richard Turner (09th May 2004)

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