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"A moral tale"?

I went, braced for two hours of gratuitous effing and blinding and religious insults but found a two act operatic masterpiece of well-crafted lyrics and music that was, if anything, heavy with morality.The show opens on a simple set of the Jerry Springer chat show with two audiences from the unwashed masses straining to spring onto the stage for their Jerry Springer Moment at every opportunity, alternately incited by the smooth-as-silk warm-up man, Dean Hussain, later to be Satan, and restrained by the mute security man, Johan Pearson. Rolf Saxon, a perfect Jerry, broods maliciously in the background.

An operatic masterpiece?

The stage is set for three people to 'fess-up their secrets. Dwight, God in Act Two, is cheating on his partner with her best friend, coke-head Zandra, and with trans-sexual 'chick-with-a-d**k', Tremont; his partner, Peaches (soprano Carrie Ellis who has a voice like an angel) is shocked, although admits to urinating on strange men herself.Ìý Montel, later Jesus, admits to a penchant for pooping in his nappy and Shawntel wants to be a pole dancer, to the disgust of her husband Chucky who likes strip clubs and Ku-Klux-Klan meetings. Keep up at the back; we're nearly there.

Just when a chorus of hooded Klansmen are tap-dancing to 'Dip me in chocolate and feed me to the lesbians', Montel, aiming for a Klansman, accidentally shoots Jerry. End of Act One.

Mary and Heather

Act Two opens with the same players in a Hollywood Limbo of painted clouds and bland music. Jerry has to arbitrate between Devil who demands an apology from God for being cast out of Heaven and God who laments: "It ain't easy being me". Adam and Eve are sore about all that fuss over one little bit of fruit and Mary berates Jesus for abandoning her.Ìý Archangel Gabriel and the Devil's minions try to keep order.It is at the end when Jerry is dangling in an iron girdle over a gaping Marlovian hell that we are told what it's all about: "It's the human condition we're talking about here.'" He concludes with, "F*** you, f*** you all," which is hardly a message of solace but has a certain gnomic resignation to the bewildering vagaries of Jerry's world.Somebody told the Radio Times that the show used the 'F' word 3,168 times and the 'C' word 297 times.Ìý There's no denying the strong language but I didn't hear one gratuitous swear word.Ìý The Fs and Cs crack from the audience like whips over the heads of the performers and they are incorporated in the songs' lyrics with pathos.

Cabaret singer Sharon: 'Fabulous'

On the way into the theatre I spoke to two Christian women, Mary and Heather, protesting outside. They gave me a leaflet entitled 'What's all the fuss about?' They said it was about blaspheming the name of Jesus and that they were there to witness this for Him. I asked them if they had seen the opera.Ìý Mary said, 'No', and Heather said she had seen excerpts but she didn't have to see a whole boil to know what was underneath. I think they might have found some good in the show.Ìý I thought there was a distinctly religious theme to the performance, something of the medieval Everyman story of human beings struggling to find redemption or at least a Jerry Springer Moment in a pitiless and profane world.

On the way out I met the Bradford cabaret singer Sharon Cossins and asked her what she thought of the show. "Fabulous!Ìý The best operatic singing I've heard on the stage for a long time."