Who Do You Think You Aria? ★★★★★ - August 2002 Fest Magazine - By Helen Pidd - August 7th, 2002

Two things spring immediately to mind when confronted with the title to this show. It’s an opera? Surely it’s just a single joke tenuously stretched over two hours? Don’t be dissuaded. It may have the structure of a conventional opera, and sure, it seems a bit of a one-trick pony at first. However the novelty…

Jerry Springer: The Opera - August 2002 The List - August 1st, 2002

You thought it was just another tawdry late-night TV show. Think again. JERRY SPRINGER THE OPERA is an exhilarating clash between high art and low comedy. Words: Mark Fisher It has a cast of 21, a chorus of ten, a live band, a demanding score and a libretto that goes ‘What the fuck, what the…

It ain’t over until the fat lady screams - July 2002 The Sunday Times - July 28th, 2002

An opera about the controversial American chat show host Jerry Springer has become the hot ticket at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Allan Brown explains why. The Fringe is used to comedy shows selling themselves by using celebrity names opportunistically shoe-horned into the title. Stand-up comedy is clever enough to know a familiar name always stands…

Aria of the Lesbian Dwarf Diaper Fetishist - March 2002 New York Times - By Marshall Sella - March 17th, 2002

The current sensation at the Battersea Arts Center in London delves into the themes of any number of beloved operas: infidelity and misdirected love, rage and untimely death. An aging diva, cheated by life, sings a heart-rending aria expressing her profound weariness with failure: ”I’ve had enough of dying/I just want to dance.” But the…

Jerry Springer: The Opera - February 2002 Culture Wars - By James Redick - February 18th, 2002

It’s a tall order to make something that is already an absurdity and parody it without making it cliché and trite. Yet Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee’s Jerry Springer: the Opera is able to do it wonderfully and hilariously. With a witty sense of mockery and sympathy, the two-act play/musical/opera gracefully glides through the foolishness…

Jerry Springer: The Opera ★★★★★ - February 2002 The Mail On Sunday - By Georgina Brown - February 17th, 2002

On the other side of the river, Battersea Arts Centre is becoming another increasingly thrilling powerhouse. Tom Morris’s latest project, still in development, is Jerry Springer: the Opera, a thoroughly modern musical that does something musicals rarelyéfv do: it holds a mirror up to the contemporary world and reveals it to be sick. Witty, inventive,…