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Jerry controversial
Conrad Astley17/ 3/2006
Jerry Springer The Opera, following months of controversy, is arriving in Manchester, allowing audiences to make up their own minds. Conrad Astley spoke to writer Stewart Lee and composer Richard Thomas.
ANY publicity is good publicity, according to the old
adage.
Get anyone to complain loudly about how your film, book or play
will damage the public's morals, and your sales will smash through
the roof.
If the person complaining is a Tory politician, a retired
headteacher, or a representative of the Church, all the
better.
So you might assume those responsible for Jerry Springer The Opera
would have been delighted by all the attention.
Christian groups, furious about what they saw as the show's
blasphemous content, threatened to protest outside theatres showing
the production, and the BBC received a record 63,000 complaints
over a televised version.
However, anyone making that assumption would be wrong.
"This show spent years in London, was a box office success, won
awards, had journalists flying out to rave about it," said composer
Richard Thomas. "Then all of a sudden there were thousands of
complaints from people who hadn't seen it, and every- one seemed to
be talking about that."
The show, in which Jerry Springer hosts an episode of his show in
hell - having to referee an argument between God, The Devil and
Jesus - attracted nearly half a million theatregoers during its
West End run.
It also made theatre history by receiving the Olivier Award,
Critics Circle Award, and Evening Standard Award for best musical,
and received praise from Kylie Minogue, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and
Joan Collins, as well as a cautious thumbs-up from Jerry Springer
himself.
But the publicity did mean The Arts Council pulled out of funding
the tour, while theatres across the country refused to run the
production.
However, it is now in the middle of a smaller tour, and is opening
at The Opera House next week.
"It didn't help matters at all," said writer and director Stewart
Lee. "There was no reason to assume you couldn't tour a show that
had a successful West End run and won an Olivier Award.
"It's taken us a year of our lives to get things moving again, and
we've had to cut the budget massively.
"It used to make me exasperated but now it really makes me
angry."
Richard said 30-strong crowds had arrived to protest outside
theatres in Plymouth and Birmingham, but the numbers had quickly
dropped after the opening night.
"The Christian right have had 12 months of extreme publicity, but
they've blown it," he said.
"They're starting to retreat back into the holes they crawled out
from."
However, his main complaint against the Christian groups was that
many of their claims about the production - later quoted by
newspapers as fact - were highly inaccurate.
"They said the play contained 8,000 swear words," he said. "That
baffled us a little bit. There are only 13,000 words in the entire
show, so that would mean two out of every three words. We went
through the script and only counted 174, including words like
`nipple'.
"They said there's a scene in which Jesus wears a nappy. There is a
character who wears a nappy, but Jesus appears wearing a loincloth,
like he does in all Christian art, and in the Bible.
"They've quoted lines in the play as if they're things we've said.
There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding about how a play
works.
"The only people who watch the play and are still offended by it
tend to be scumbags who think all gays should go to hell.
"The notion we spent all these years writing this to cause offence
is ridiculous. If I really wanted to offend someone I would have
just done a s**t in a churchyard. That would have caused more
offence and would have been much easier."
But in the wake of riots over the publication of cartoons attacking
Islam, could Stewart ever see himself writing Mohammed The
Musical?
"This was written from the perspective of us knowing our way around
popular culture and knowing our way around Christian iconography,"
he said.
"We wouldn't start writing anything about The Koran because we
don't know enough about it, in the same way we wouldn't write a
satire of Balinese dance. But I think it's inevit able that
something like that will happen in a multicultural society."
Jerry Springer The Opera opens at the Opera House on Monday
and runs until April 1.
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