'I WOULD FULLY EXPECT to be on Joe Duffy during the week," Simon Delaney says about the forthcoming run of Jerry Springer: The Opera. "People will come to be offended, and if we haven't offended you we haven't done our job."
If that sounds like swaggering bravado, it’s not. It’s more a pragmatic acceptance that as the lead in a show that has caused controversy wherever it has been staged, he’s bound to have to come out front and defend it at some point during its week-long run in Dublin, the first time it has been staged in Ireland.
"The first act ends with tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members, [and] one of the songs is called Chick with a Dick," Delaney says in his genial way. "This show comes with a serious health warning."
The musical, which was written by the musician Richard Thomas and the comedian Stewart Lee, was staged at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2002 before transferring first to the National Theatre in London, a year later, for a sell-out run and then to the West End, where it won several awards and ran for more than 600 performances.
It’s inspired by The Jerry Springer Show, which at the time the musical was first staged was a globally syndicated talk show famous for its bottom-of-the-barrel content – it’s now in its 21st and final season on US television. Week after week ordinary people come on it to reveal the most bizarre, intensely personal details – subjects range from homophobia and racism to infidelity and sexual deviancy – while the audience whoops and cheers.
Springer is like a ringmaster, observing, goading and superior, and each show typically ends with a bout of foul-mouthed full-on violence. The show’s security guard had to come on to the stage so often, to break up fights, that he became famous enough to be given his own talk show.
From its early days in Edinburgh, Jerry Springer: The Operawas critically acclaimed as the ultimate mix of high and low art. It's a fully staged opera – the role of Jerry, here played by Delaney in a production presented by National Youth Musical Theatre, is the only speaking part – and the themes and the characters could have appeared in any episode of the trashy talk show.
Aside from the “extremely coarse language and adult situations” that the Grand Canal Theatre flags prominently – it really is determined to warn the potentially offended – the show’s deeply irreverent use of Christian imagery has added another layer of controversy. The characters in the first act, including a nappy-wearing adult, a transsexual and a stripper and her partner, take on the roles in the third act of Jesus, Mary and Adam and Eve, while Jerry, who has been shot by one of the audience, must state his case in hell before God and the devil.
"What it's really about is the modern obsession with 15 minutes of fame," says Delaney. "Look at The X Factor, all these shows. They take people in and spit them out again. We don't think of the damage that can be done to these kids or how reality-TV shows exploit ordinary, sometimes damaged people for our entertainment."
The Jerry Springer Show, says Delaney, “defined car-crash television, but it’s what happens to the people after the cameras have been switched off.”
The 41-year-old Dublin actor says he took the part for three reasons. "I know the director, John Donnelly, from my days in amateur musicals; I'm aware of the NYMT's previous work – they did Spring Awakeningand Rent– and, well, there's here," he says, gesturing around the spectacular Grand Canal Theatre.
In any case, Delaney’s not one for hanging around. Years ago the actor Michael Gambon gave him some advice. “Michael said the difference between British and Irish actors and American ones is that we tend to sit at home, wondering why we’re not working, while American actors, when they’re not working, they learn Spanish, take diving lessons, learn to ride a unicycle, anything that’ll give them the edge in auditions.”
Two years ago he took a chance when Zonad, an Irish movie he starred in, got rave reviews at Tribeca Film Festival, in New York. Delaney, who lives in Lusk, in north Co Dublin, with wife, Lisa, and their two small boys, had wanted to try his luck in the US but was always advised not to attempt it without a project. With Zonadas his calling card, he got a working visa – "six grand, a lot of paperwork, and it takes months" – and was quickly taken on by a New York agent and a manager. Last year, he got a part in Touch, a pilot starring Kiefer Sutherland and Danny Glover, which has been picked up by Fox for a 13-episode run. He's waiting to see if he's going to be in any of them – "Even three would be brilliant."
The two roles he's bagged so far in the US are straight acting parts, not the cheeky-chappie comedy roles he's known for here, starting with his breakthrough role, 10 years ago, in the TV series Bachelors Walk.
Even if Touch doesn't come through, his part in an episode of The Good Wife,screened last week in the US to an audience of 19 million people, and in which he plays an Irish-born British lawyer, has given him a taste of what might be. "Julianna Margulies [star of The Good Wife] told me, 'It's a big show for you, not just because everyone watches it but because the bigwigs at CBS watch it.' "
Doing The Good Wifewas also an eye-opener to the speed of episodic TV. He filmed the show in August, during a nine-day shoot, and it was on television just weeks later – he has already received his first residuals cheque.
Delaney's also getting used to a new, seriously competitive way of working. Getting the role in Touchtook three auditions and a screen test; pre-auditions to get an audition are normal in the US for any TV show, and he has auditioned for movie roles from Dublin via Skype. And that's at the glamour end of the business. When Jerry Springer: The Operacloses he's off to Llandudno, in north Wales, to direct a panto, Aladdin. "It's two weeks' work. It's work," says a pragmatic Delaney.
Jerry Springer: The Operais at the Grand Canal Theatre, Dublin, from October 31st to November 5th; grandcanaltheatre.ie
Jerry Springer: the controversy
When the filmed version of the West End production of Jerry Springer: The Operawas screened on BBC2 in 2005 it resulted in 55,000 complaints, the broadcaster had to fend off a private blasphemy prosecution from a Christian Voice, a prayer group, and it found itself in a bizarre public spat about the amount of swearing in the show. The Daily Mail reported 8,000 obscenities; the BBC replied that the real number was less than 300 and that the newspaper had reached its tally by counting every swear word – most beginning with F or C – sung by each member of the 27-strong chorus.
The show’s depiction of Jesus as a fat man in a nappy who sings that he’s “a little bit gay” was one of the elements that Christian groups found deeply offensive. The BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, defended the decision to screen the musical, saying he believed that the production was not blasphemous and that it went out after the watershed with clear warnings about strong language.
During its West End run the opera picked up four Laurence Olivier Awards, including for best musical, as well as several Critic's Circle and Evening Standard awards. This is usually a guarantee that a show will have a long and profitable life after its London run, but Jerry Springer: The Opera's first major tour of Britain, in 2006, failed. It had been due to visit 21 regional theatres, but a threatened picket by Christian Voice prompted several venues to pull out. The tour went ahead, but scaled down.
