SYNOPSIS Lyrics - Jerry Springer: the Opera Soundtrack

Act 1 - Earth

An anonymous mob assembles and reveals its hopes, dreams and secrets,
and its love of the American TV talk show host, Jerry Springer.
After a brief squabble, the crowd dissipates into a TV studio where Jerry's Warm-Up Man, Jonathan Wierus,
works them into a frenzy of expectation, culminating in the arrival of Jerry himself.
Monitors decend and explain that the Jerry Springer Show may not be suitable for children.

Jerry introduces his first guest, Dwight. Dwight is cheating on Peaches,
who reveals she once enjoyed a moment of tenderness
during a sexual encounter in a toilet.
Zandra, whom Dwight is also sleeping with, has drug problems and a nostalgic view of
the past. The three argue and fight and Steve,
the senior of Jerry's three security men, breaks them up.
A Valkyrie appears in Jerry's sub-conscious mind and admonishes him.
Dwight then admits he is cheating on both Peaches and Zandra with a
transexual, Tremont, who arrives to tell his story, egged on by the Warm-Up Man.
Finally, Peaches wishes death and destruction on all three. A commerical break follows.

The over-zealous Warm-Up Man causes Jerry to fumble the introduction of his next guest,
Montel, who is here to tell his partner, Andrea,
that he enjoys dressing as a baby and fouling his own underwear.
Jerry's Inner Valkyrie tries to stop this confession but it goes ahead anyway.
Unburdened, Montel tells Andrea he is also seeing Baby Jane, a woman who likes to dress
as a little girl. Baby Jane has a Jerry Springer moment of her own.
The Warm-Up Man returns to contribute the the general humiliation of Andrea,
who is eventually left alone to lament her situation.
A second commerical break follows.

Backstage, Jonathan, the Warm-Up Man, explains his relationship with Jerry;
he had been extremely depressed and suicidal,
but being given a job on the show had given him a purpose in life.
However, when Jerry arrives, he sacks Jonathan for his
unprofessional behaviour, and Steve throws him out of the building.

Jerry introduces his final guests, Shawntel, who dreams of being a poledancer,
and Chucky, her sexist and disaproving husband.
Shawntel is persuaded to dance and then her mother, Irene, arrives.
She alludes to a miserable incident in her past,
and then attacks her daughter, calling her a whore and saying she will burn in hell.
Chucky claims to be the innocent one in the story,
but Jerry calls upon secret camera footage, which reveals him to be a patron of strip clubs
and a member of the race hate organisation, the Ku Klux Klan.
The Klan take to the stage, and during the confussion,
the Warm-Up Man appears on stage, with a gun.
He hands it to Montel, and persuades him to shoot at the Klan members.
However, during the stuggle between Montel and a member of the security team,
the Warm-Up Man jostles Montel, and he accidently shoots Jerry,
who collapses into the arms of his faithful servant, Steve.

Act 2 - Purgatory

Jerry awakes, wounded and in a wheelchair, surrounded by nurses in a fog enshrouded wilderness.
Steve arrives, and gives him a cigar.
Then he is introduced to shadowy incarnations of his former guests,
all of whom have suffered unpleasant fates.

Baby Jane returns too, with a monkey wrench in her skull,
and reveals that Andrea murdered her in a fit of rage.
All of them imply that it is Jerry's fault they came to such grizzly ends,
but Jerry attempts to justify himself, by telling them they all volentered themselves for the show,
they all knew the risks and signed a disclaimer.
Baby Jane warms Jerry of impending doom.

Jonathan Wierus, the Warm-Up Man appears with two of the security team,
who, after a grand entrance, reveals themselves as Satan and his servants.
Jerry is sceptical at first,
but when Steve is attacked and he is shown the severed head of his manager,
he is forced to comply.
Baby Jane pleads for Jerry's soul, but is unsuccessful.
Satan tells Jerry he wants him to come to Hell to do a special show for him,
and if he refuses or fails, he will be sexually assaulted with serrated fencing material.
Jerry has no choice but to acquiese, and he and Steve decend to hell.

Act 3 - Hell

Baby Jane announces the arrival of Jerry and Steve in Hell,
which is a charred and smouldering recreation of their own TV studio,
with burned-out chairs and an audience of damned souls and demons trapped in its walls.
Monitors descend and explain that the Jerry Springer Show in
Hell may not be suitable for those without a strong grasp of Judeo-Christian mythology.
Baby Jane gives Jerry cue cards which introduce Satan,
who is clearly running the show as some kind of kangaroo court.
He wants an apology for his expulsion from Heaven
and forces Jerry to work only within the boundries of the cue cards he has been given.

Jerry is made to introduce the next guest, Jesus,
who bears striking similarities to Jerry's former guest, Montel.
Jesus and Satan indulge in a battle of wits.

Satan's next guests are Adam and Eve, who resemble Chucky and Shawntel.
They plead their case to Jesus,
with Eve stating that it was just one little apple that caused them to be thrown out of the Garden of Eden,
and Adam attempting to load all of the blame onto Eve, claiming 'she made me do it'.
When Jesus refuses to accept their argument,
Eve becomes angry and physically attacks Jesus.

Jesus' mother, Mary, who reminds us of Irene, is called,
and she leads a general comendation of Jesus.

The frustrated audience and guests eventually turn on Jerry himself,
who says he can not solve their dispute short of a mircale.
Right on cue, God, Angel Gabriel, Archangel Michael and a host of lesser angels arrive.
God has the statuesque presence of Dwight,
whilst Gabriel and Michael are the angelic replicas of Tremont and Andrea.

God has come to save Jerry from Hell, and also to ask his help.
He invites him to come to heaven and sit alongside him.
Jerry accepts, but Satan refuses to give up. The two opposing sides both fight over Jerry,
with the devils eventually restraning him in a gibbet, swinging high over a pit of flame.
Jerry pleads for his life with a series of glib homilies,
but eventually abandons hope and in doing so makes
an honest statement which resounds with his audience.
Heaven and Hell put aside their differences and join in a hymn of praise to all life.

Everyone disperses and Jerry is lowered to the ground,
where Steve and Baby Jane are waiting for him.
Baby Jane returns his jacket, and bids him a fond farewell, saying he must now,
against his wishes, leave Hell and return to Earth.

Jerry awakes in his studio, dying in Steve's arms.
He makes a final speech, asking his audience to remember
that there are no absolutes of good and evil, and that history defines us all by what we do,
and what we choose not to do.
Finally he asks that they all take care of themselves, and eachother,
before taking his last breath.
The guests and audience are joined in sorrow, reminding us all to 'take care of yourselves
and eachother' and that 'it ain't easy being Jerry.'

A sumptuous closing number of thirty three tap dancing Jerry Springers
then makes the show's opaque doctrine of moral
relativism more acceptable to West End audiences.