SPRINGER TIME FOR OPERA AND EDINBURGH

Iconoclastic comedian Stewart Lee and composer Richard Thomas tell Rory Ford why they have turned their hand to a rather unusual opera.

IT'S Saturday afternoon and The Music Hall in The Assembly Rooms is steadily filling up. The occasion - which is becoming more and more like an 'event' as the room becomes more packed - is the second preview of Jerry Springer - The Opera.
As more and more people file in, the man beside me becomes more and more agitated and begins mumbling as much to himself as to me. "I only earned 80 quid when I came up here with the Comedy Zone in 1991," he mutters as he surveys the large two-tiered stage that will soon hold 21 singers and a five-piece band.

The nervous man next to me is Stewart Lee, director and librettist of Jerry Springer. And even if the show sells out every performance of its Edinburgh run - and it just might - he'll still be leaving the Fringe with even less than 80 quid. Precisely nothing in fact. For this Lee is grateful. "People kept telling me we should bring this show to Edinburgh and I was utterly terrified," he says, with the air of a man who admits to having had "about 20 hours sleep in the last week". As befitting such an ambitious scale venture, the opera is costing a smaIl fortune to stage, so that its box office receipts cannot possibly recoup the outlay. Fortunately Lee and composer Richard Thomas, who originated the idea, are covered by a group of financial backers - all of whom are, no doubt, soon to be very happy. Because this is a preview (ie no critics), reviewing the show is strictly verboten, but presumably Lee and Thomas won't mind me passing on the advice that you should definitely book NOW if you want to catch what just might be the most original and entertaining show on the Fringe this year. The West End and probably Broadway beckons. Seriously.

After the performance the two men are visibly buzzing. It's only the second time, they say, that they've heard the full score performed and they're obviously delighted, as well they might be.

The public's response is phenomenal. People are grabbing badges that read Slut Junky and Chick With A Dick, while the plaintive refrain: "Cover me with chocolate and throw me to the lesbians" proves eminently hummable.

"It's good doing it here because the Assembly is quite like the West End in a way;" says Lee afterwards. "You have ABBA tribute shows and Gyles Brandreth so it does give you a feel for how the show works in a mainstream environment. I think a lot of people who come just want to be entertained and don't care what it says about opera or the human condition."

And Jerry Springer -The Opera does say quite a bit about the human condition. Infidelity, jealousy; murder, suicide and a cavalcade of sexual fetishism, all human life is here. Which is why, of course, every hack comedian on the Fringe was doing Jerry Springer jokes TWO years ago. It's odd to find Lee - probably the most iconoclastic comedian of the past decade - reverting to well-ploughed ground.
"True, but it was Richard's idea originally and he asked me to get involved," Lee says with a sly srnile: 'The originality of the material was never a consideration for me. What was is how well it would work as an opera. When I first started writing with [former partner] Richard Herring 15 years ago we had this list of things that we would never write about, but as I get older I think how you approach subjects and manage to treat them originally is more important than what you're dealing with."
Richard Thomas began writing the opera 14 months ago after logging over a hundred hours watching the Springer show on TV.

" I really like Jerry Springer," he cheerfully admits, "and if you watch that many shows you can't watch Oprah Winfrey or whatever because they're just whorish and vile. I like the fact that the show is a cultural phenomenon and the fact that he's a real working class hero," says Thomas of the former mayor of Cincinnati turned king of trash TV.

"He's sort of like St Mephistopheles because he's never judgmental. I mean, Jerry won't have anyone on unless the other person is there to defend themselves - or have a fight," laughs Thomas. "OK, it is deeply exploitative." Lee, admits to being more ambivalent about Springer but came onboard after Thomas started doing workshops at the Battersea Arts Centre where the composer offered helpful punters "beer for an idea". The best ideas got a can of Grolsch while duds were awarded a can of generic supermarket lager.

"The subject matter is a bit of a red herring," Lee smiles. "The good thing is because it's what feels like a familiar idea people come along thinking they know what they're going to get. But there are lots of emotionally touching parts in it and the way it develops in the second half seems to surprise people.

"It's written and sung to an incredibly professional level and that really throws people because they think they're going to get some sketch show burlesque of American talk shows. So in may ways the familiarity of the title is really great because if it was called Chat Show - The Opera With Depressing Bits And A Meditation on Good And Evil then many people who are going to the ABBA singalongs wouldn't be coming.

"But as it is they get exposed to something that is probably more morally complex than they would normally be exposed to."

This isn't mere hyperbole on Lee's part, the second half of the opera sees Jerry Springer in Hell mediating on the age-old argument between God and Satan ("I don't do conflict resolution," he protests).

"The first half is really what people would expect and the second half is a reward for me to go deeper musically into things," explains Thomas who has undergone months of coaxing classically trained opera singers more used to Il Trovatore to trailer-trash.

"The main problem was the diction," recalls Thomas. "A lot of opera singing is far too stylised. In rehearsals a lot of people who had amazing opera voices sounded too straight and I used to say to them use the laziest diction you've ever sung - just imagine that you were speaking. A lot of singers seem to think that their diction has to be perfection and that's just elitist."

The result is a real rarity - an opera that you can actually follow with lyrics that you can actually understand.

"Richard originally wanted the second half to be a lot of people hanging upside down singing a requiem for the American Dream," explains Lee. "I've only seen one opera, Wagner's Ring Cycle, and there's a bit in that where someone goes down into a netherworld, so I suggested that."

Apart from giving Lee the chance to wrongfoot his audience, the switch in scenario gives him the chance to air his ambivalence to his subject when "Springer" is confronted with past guests who have been humiliated on his show and committed suicide as a result. "A person with less broadcasting experience would feel responsible for that," comes the glib reply.

Unsurprisingly, the show has already weathered the threat of legal action from the producers of Springer's American TV show, but Lee and Thomas believe they have managed to smooth the waters.

"We actually met him a month ago because he was over and trying to find out what the show was about," says Lee. "We quite confidently told him that we didn't think that there would be a problem because I think firstly it's not really a parody of him and also I think he, even if he does find the opera slightly critical, would be flattered by inspiring all this beautiful music."

With Springer himself coming to speak at the TV Festival later this month the show's co-creator's are eager to get the man himself along to the Assembly Rooms.

"We'll probably have to sneak him in at the back because I can't imagine anyone in the show not being affected by him sitting in the front row," says Lee.

It's also hard to imagine Springer not being affected by the performance. Fringe Director Paul Gudgin who was also at the preview opined that the chat show host would "probably be sitting there rigid with a huge smile while he thought: 'I want this f*****g thing stopped'."

Still, perhaps he could get a good show out of it - "These Men Made An Opera About Me And I'm Mad As Hell".