Jerry Springer: the Opera
Nicholas Hytner promised that his tenure at the National would bring a new audience. How can he fail to attract them with this amazing new musical Jerry Springer - The Opera? What it lacks in decorum and genteel language it makes up for in freshness and excitement. Just the title is a conundrum, Jerry Springer known for his trashy television show and its cultural opposite, opera, that high brow preserve of the champagne sipping classes.

It is a splendid idea. The high drama of Jerry Springer's talk show with its parade of dysfunction and sexual weirdness transposed into an operatic format. Composer Richard Thomas developed the Opera Device in the form of Loré Lixenburg, as a musical shield against a hostile crowd of a cabaret in a North London pub. She was wheeled on to sing beautiful arias to silence hecklers. Jerry Springer - The Opera was a hit in its concert version at last year's Edinburgh Festival having metamorphosed from an earlier version at Battersea Arts Centre. Studios USA who own the rights to The Jerry Springer Show declined to back JSTO after they objected to the opera's language, and sexual and religious content. Irony or what? But London born Jerry Springer saw it in Edinburgh in August 2002 and gave that version of the show his blessing.

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