Thursday, January 31, 2008

JERRY, JERRY, JERRY, JERRY: Rarely have there been critical reactions quite as polarized as we see today to the two-night limited run of Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall:
  • Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams calls it "Despicable, debasing, disgusting, degrading, dehumanizing, revolting, repugnant, repulsive, frightful, awful, disgraceful, discreditable, shameful, terrible, horrible, horrendous, horrific, nauseating, offensive, depraved, loathsome, vile. It is taking a roll in a sewer. It is the pits. The lowest. The slimiest. You not only need a bath after, you need an exterminator." In case that wasn't clear, she "hated it!!!!!!!!!!!!"
  • Post critic Frank Scheck is kinder, noting "While the one-note satirical humor wears thin quickly, it still impresses with its audacity and imagination."
  • Variety raves, saying that the show succeeds not only in "teasing out its obvious reflections on the exploitation of tawdriness and torment in American popular culture, but uncovering the poignancy in the sad, passionate yearnings of its freaks and rednecks."
  • Ben Brantley loves it too, arguing that it may well be a "great American musical."

Having seen the show in London a few years back, I'm much more in the Brantley camp. Sure, it's not going to make the bluehaired Wednesday matinee crowd happy, what with a repetitive chant in the second act of "f**ked in the a** with barbed wire!" But for those not easily offended, it's a fascinating colission of low culture and high culture with some interesting cosmology in the second act.

No comments:

Post a Comment