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Jerry Springer: The OperaRadio review: The Reunion

The writers and cast of Jerry Springer: The opera were brought back together in The Reunion (Radio 4, Sunday)

By Edward Wickham in Church Times Posted on Friday, August 18th, 2023

AMONG the customary luvvie banter, there came in The Reunion (Radio 4, Sunday) a significant revelation. Kirsty Wark was hosting the writers and cast of Jerry Springer: The opera, the show which, in the early 2000s, progressed rapidly from Battersea to Edinburgh to the National Theatre, found more than a million viewers on BBC2, and from there went on tour, pursued by crowds of protesters. The revelation was not that the participants were surprised by the fury of their opponents — though they might have anticipated some push-back when a show notorious for its depiction of Christian figures was rewarded with licence-payer funds; rather, it was that Jerry Springer himself — who had always publicly praised the show — was secretly incensed.

One of the co-writers, Stewart Lee, told the story. Springer visited the show in Edinburgh and was delighted by the first half. But, with Act Two, when the action moves to a cartoonish Hell, a message emerges which Springer found deeply insulting. As one lyric has it, “Nothing is wrong, nothing is right.” The moral relativism, Springer declared, was tantamount to Holocaust denial.

The anecdote passed without further reference by Ms Wark’s guests; nor did Mr Lee, in the course of a lengthy vilification of his Christian critics (which included a riff on the involvement of Tufton Street lobbyists), find the opportunity to address this most damning of accusations. It is one thing to bat away those faith-affiliated protesters: “nice people” who had all apparently been manipulated by Stephen Green and Christian Voice. In an ironic twist, the threat to freedom of speech posed by Mr Green and others backfired, and led to the abolition of the Blasphemy Act. But the objection raised by the show’s real-life hero deserves more respect.

Written by Edward Wickham in Church Times on 18th August 2023. Filed Under: 2023, Jerry Springer: The Opera
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