Jerry Final Thoughts

So, I've had Jerry Springer TO going through my head all day. As I said yesterday, it is a simply phenomenal show. The music is more operatic than showtune-ish, and the singers carry it off well. As the show starts, cast members are sprinkled throughout the audience, and after the warmup act, they all start singing, and get up and walk towards the stage. One note of caution: just because the cast members are singing while in the audience does NOT mean that it is an audience sing-along. They get rather grumpy if you try that. Despite the language, it's very clear that this is an opera, although it's very unlikely that we'll ever see it on the Lyric's stage. The 29 member cast carries it off well, singing and dancing to perfection. The story is fairly straightforward, although a couple scenes made me feel like I had missed something earlier, particularly when the warmup act is fired (supposedly it was because he couldn't control the audience, but I never got that, the fight between him and Jerry seemed somewhat contrived because of that), and in the last act, I think I missed something in the exchange between Jesus and Satan. However, the story still works very well, mostly because they cast is top-level talent. Of particular mention are Kate Garassino as a wanna-be pole dancer married to a closet KKK member in the first act, and as Eve, mother of all mankind in the third act, and Jeremy Rill as the warmup man in the first act and Satan in the third act. Brian Simmons as Jerry himself was almost perfect. While Jerry Springer is actually fairly small in person (yes, I have to admit, I have been to a taping, but it was a couple years before his total slide into trashy smut, there was still an ever so slender thread of, if not respectability, at least at least a state of not completely trashiness) and Brian is somewhat larger, the size worked, Jerry was a fairly imposing figure, intent on self-promotion even as he used his cue cards as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the culture his show creates. I also have to mention dancer/chorus member D. Eric Woolweber, who was in Flora last summer, who always commands the stage, even as a background figure, he's got quite a career in front of him. The overall theme is somewhat hard to decipher, I'm still working on it, but it seems to reserve judgement while still rebuking Jerry and the culture that worships him. I have to take the whole "everything is nothing" theme that the chorus, as the show's audience, comes to, as being sarcastic and not serious at all, otherwise there's a huge problem. Anyways, the singing is wonderful, the dancing (choreographed by Brenda Didier) is superb, and the whole show, directed by David Zac, is so worth seeing, and hopefully opens up a whole new era for the Bailiwick. Next up, Philip Glass at Ravinia on Wednesday.