LONDON -- The first hint that this is not your usual opera comes long before the diaper-clad fat guy sings, before the line of Ku Klux Klan members does a snappy dance in white robes and masks, before the chorus trills, "My mom used to be my dad!"\nThe production's very name suggests that something extraordinary is about to unfold on one of London's premier stages:\n"Jerry Springer -- the Opera."\nIf your reaction is "What!?" you aren't alone.\nSpringer's television show, as the world knows, is about people so desperate to get on TV that they'll bare the sleaziest secrets of their lives, like, say, the fact that a married father of three is a cross-dresser who's having an affair with the dominatrix granny next door.\nOpera, on the other hand, is about grand and overarching themes of human struggle, often exquisitely sung in a foreign language by barrel-chested characters wearing horns on their heads.\nIt took a clever British musical-comedy composer and jingle-writer, Richard Thomas, to realize that the two distinct entertainment forms actually have much in common. It happened two-and-a-half years ago, in the wee hours, when Thomas was watching a "particularly violent" episode of the Springer show on cable TV in London.\n"There were all these people onstage screaming at each other," Thomas said, and no one could "understand a word they were saying. There was an audience baying for blood. And I suddenly thought, 'Oh, goodness, this is an opera. This is operatic.' … It's a very obvious idea when you think about it."\nIn that eureka moment, the germ of what could be London's hottest new hit was born.\n"Jerry Springer -- the Opera" began preview performances April 9 on the Lyttelton stage at the Royal National Theater, a prestigious venue generally known for its excellent revivals of American musicals such as "Oklahoma!"\nJudging by early reaction -- applause, laughter, shouts of "Jerry! Jerry!" -- this is going to be bigger than big, and the National's new director, Nicholas Hytner (taking over from Trevor Nunn), has made a canny move, indeed. Opening night is April 29 and the show is set to run until at least early July.\nThe title character, played by ex-New Yorker Michael Brandon, co-star of the mid-1980s British cop show "Dempsey and Makepeace," is spookily Jerry-like. The only character who doesn't sing, he seems chillingly detached from the debauchery and mayhem he has released all around him.
His depraved "guests" -- played by opera singers with long resumes and magnificent voices -- do a great deal with four-letter words, and their lurid confessions (the diaper man, for instance, is a coprophiliac) make this a show for adults.\nBut Thomas and his director and co-librettist, Stewart Lee, aren't just about doing a Springer spoof set to original music. There's a deeper vein to be tapped, as the pathos and tragedy of Jerry's guests emerge.\nOne of them, Baby Jane, who has attained her life's peak by being on the show, sings: "This is my Jerry Springer moment. I don't want this moment to die. So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!"\nThomas, 39, and Lee, 36, formerly a standup comedian, knew they were on to something when a version of the opera staged last August at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, played to sold-out houses.\nSpringer saw the opera in Edinburgh, and his publicist, Linda Shafran, said he liked it. The opera program carries a Springer quote: "I guess there have been operas about greater tragedies than my show, so what the heck. How could I not be honored?"\nThere's no word, though, on whether Chicago-based Studios USA, which owns the Springer show, likes it -- or might sue over it. The company didn't return calls.\nThough preview audiences seem to love it, Thomas and Lee are taking nothing for granted.\n"So, here I am, a week before opening," Thomas wrote last week in London's Daily Telegraph. "A great cast, a great set, great band, great choreography, great direction. If the show bombs, there'll be no one to blame but me"
