Fans of sophisticated pornography will no doubt be pleased to learn that all three versions of “Caligula”, Penthouse-publisher Bob Guccione’s cinematic ode to the most depraved of all Caesers, have just been released in an “Imperial” DVD package. This includes the R-rated edition commonly found on Netflix and in Blockbuster stores (and which must run thirty minutes), the X-rated rendering curious audiences flocked to when it was released in 1980, and the unrated, three-hour one previously available only in Europe. Of the last, an associate who managed to track down a bootleg described it as being so filthy “you want to take a shower after seeing it.” I, myself, don’t plan on purchasing this collection. I still haven’t showered enough after watching the “X” level edition on VHS, back in 1984, courtesy of a childhood friend and the sexually liberated Mom who gave it to him. Besides, I just attended the opening night of the nearly-as-X-rated live musical, “Jerry Springer: The Opera!”
As anyone with even a passing awareness of the boob tube knows, Jerry Springer, former mayor of Cincinnati, has spent the past decade-and-a-half presiding over a show that is about as close to Penthouse magazine and Caligula’s lair as afternoon television has ever gotten. This is, in part, because it occasionally features people who are severely deformed in some “entertaining” manner - including, as I briefly witnessed before quickly changing the channel, a pair of adult siamese twins joined at the head. However, most of the guests are victims of low incomes and lower self-esteem, who visibly show the signs of a lifetime of absorbing monosodium glutamate and tartrazine. These folks, who usually appear on the program with one or more spouses or relatives (if they are not, in fact, one and the same), purport to have relationships rife with either incest, bestiality, sadomasochism, scatology, or all kinks at once. And, as people who’ve never even seen this program probably know, the participants engage in brawls, egged on by the audience, that make members of the World Wrestling Federation look like Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud and the other Shakespearean veterans who leant their talents to Guccione’s pageant.
So, what better subject for an opera?
Certainly, that’s what British playwrights Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee thought when they debuted their musical tribute to “The Ringmaster” in London’s West End in 2003, to much critical acclaim and international attention. A run in the subject’s home country was regarded as not only inevitable, but just around the corner. But it took until this year for the show to finally arrive on these shores. This is entirely thanks to lawsuits stemming from protests by Christian groups in England, who not only rival our country’s religious right in being concerned about someone somewhere having a good time, but exceed them in their power as a censorship body.
What drove the U.K.’s answer to Focus on the Family to stop the revue in its tracks became apparent to me when I attended a premiere in Minneapolis. The city is one of three - in addition to Memphis and, of course, Chicago, where the real “Springer” show continues to be taped - in which the opera is being presented, a result of the producers’ failure to raise money for a Broadway debut. The first act of the show, presented by the Minneapolis Music Theatre company at Hennepin Stages, features a man in a diaper, a transvestite, a would-be stripper sporting an enormous prosthetic butt, and a troupe of tap-dancing Klansmen (two of them played by black members of the company, which I like to consider an homage to segregationist Justice Clarence Thomas). Now these elements, on the surface, sound like pretty routine components of any musical comedy troupe. But the arias that these characters - guests or audience members of the show, on a set that’s a fairly good representation of the real soundstage on which history continues to be made - sang of matters that would have made the short-lived Roman Emporer drool with delight.
In the case of the man in the diaper, Montel, played by Thomas Karki in the production’s best performance, he confesses to his wife, Andrea (Emily Brooke Hansen), seated next to him, that he wants nothing more than to be her baby - really, truly, her baby. This involves not only wearing said diaper, which he reveals after ripping off his suit, but, as he puts forth in canticle, having diarrhetic feces come rushing out of his rectum with the force of an active volcano. Similarly, Peaches, a petite, churchgoing guest played by Kim Kivens, confesses that she enjoys nothing more than urinating on human receptacles both live and dead. And wannabe pole dancer Shawntel, embodied by Christine Karki in the revue’s second best turn, taunts her abusive, two-timing husband, Chucky (Tim Kuehl) while straddling a pole much like one that was featured on the actual “Springer” show for a couple of years, and on which professional dancers strutted their stuff to provide a break from the host’s counseling.
While the above characters and their proclivities should cause offense only to those who thought “Will and Grace” was a threat to family values, what really had the British Bible thumpers hitting the ceilings of their chapels was the second act. This details the descent by Jerry Springer (Carl M. Shoenberg) into Hell, after being shot by his producer, Jonathan (Derek Blechinger) during the on-set riot that closes Act I. Jerry finds himself in a red-tinted, flame-kissed version of his set, greeted by Satan, who turns out to be the same producer who shot him, and who demands an apology for all the abuse the TV star dished out over the years. The Devil offers to send Jerry back to earth if he grants that apology, and if he presides over a verbal face-off between Beelzebub and some historic thorns in his side. At first, Jerry balks. But, after being threatened with an eternal version of the same treatment Caligula gives two newlyweds in his biopic’s most infamous scene, he agrees.
This allows for repeat appearances by guests seen in the first half, who, in this section, embody familiar characters from Christianity and the Bible. Jesus comes down in the form of Diaper Man, who serves to offend religious zealots not only with his garb and his sizable, ghostly pale gut, but with a musical piece that is easily the best of the night. When Jerry asks the fallen angel if he has anything to say to the son of God, he and his adversary engage in a duet that consists of but two words, said only once, but with the first one’s second letter stretched out over the course of several melodic minutes. Do I really need to tell you what those words are?
Shortly after “Satan and Jesus Spat” comes to its finale, the jowels of the English Jesus freaks no doubt found a further source of wobbling thanks to the arrival of the Virgin Mary (Susan Brody), sporting a nun’s habit and the same foul-mouthed aspect of the Big Momma who, in part one, dismisses her stripper daughter as a whore. That whore, accompanied by hubby Chucky and her gigantic posterior, do honors as Adam and Eve, warbling about apples and snakes in a manner befitting the Forum section of Guccione’s periodical. God, Himself (Shawn Nathan Baer), is carried on stage, in a manner befitting the Emporer that nearly ruined Malcolm MacDowell’s career. Despite His attempts to calm rapidly rising tensions by crooning “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Me”, all hell breaks loose between Jerry’s guests and the audience (the one on stage, that is). Though Jerry refuses to apologize and says he feels quite home in the lower world, he is swept back to earth to continue his calling of entertaining millions of sick viewers, and humiliating untold numbers of trailer park residents.
About the entertainment value of Minneapolis Musical Theatre’s rendition of the opera, most of the goals the company works hard to achieve are met. As the title character - the only one in the show that talks - Shoenborn displays professional comic chops, sounding and looking quite a bit like Springer, more so, in fact, than the publicity photos suggest. But he is, for the most part, upstaged by the rest of the cast, who are not only given the best lines, but whose vocalization ranks with that of the best opera company. The production, at times, suffers from the shrillness and overkill common to dinner theater revues, particularly in the moments that call for the entire ensemble to participate in song, dance or fisticuffs. And the performers appeared to be playing directly to friends and relatives in the (real) audience who screamed in support. Overall, though, unlike the actual Jerry Springer Show, which is like watching surgery, “Jerry Springer: The Opera” is good, clean, dirty, scatological fun. If you are lucky enough to live within driving distance of a production, particularly the one put forth by MMT, check it out. One warning: if you are a parent, keep in mind that no one under eighteen is allowed. Ironically, while you’re enjoying the show, your kids shouldn’t have any trouble going online and ordering that Imperial box set of “Caligula.”
