The New York Times-20080126-Tackling a Character Who-s a Real Character

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Tackling a Character Who's a Real Character

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Richard Thomas, the composer of Jerry Springer: The Opera, says that the libretto contains only 174 objectionable words, including nipple. That tally may not account for certain expressions -- all of them unprintable in this newspaper -- that are repeated over and over, but is nevertheless considerably shy of the 8,000 swear words and obscenities claimed, Mr. Thomas says, by overexcited critics of the show during its run in London. Jerry Springer: The Opera was a huge hit in the West End, but when it was shown on BBC television in January 2005, it generated so many complaints that some BBC executives asked for police protection.

Many of the protesters were members of Christian groups who objected not just to the show's language but to a scene in Act II in which Jerry Springer wakes up as the host of a talk show in hell, trying to referee a quarrel among Satan, a diaper-clad Jesus (who confesses to being partly gay), a Mary who is a teenage unwed mother, Adam, Eve and God the Father, wearing a white Elvis suit, who belts out one of the show's signature arias: It ain't easy being me. It so ain't easy being me.

The British controversy, together with a financial falling-out among the producers, probably accounts for why Jerry Springer: The Opera has so far not enjoyed a Broadway transfer. Instead it has had modest regional productions in Chicago, Memphis and Minneapolis, and on Tuesday and Wednesday it will be performed at Carnegie Hall in a concert version with the actor Harvey Keitel, of all people, in the title role, the only nonsinging part in the show.

Could Mr. Keitel sing if he had to? That's confidential, Mr. Keitel said last week, sitting in his dressing room at a rehearsal space in Chelsea. Unless you want to join me in the shower.

Mr. Thomas, who had dropped by Mr. Keitel's dressing room, said: I actually thought about having Jerry sing. But I couldn't work out what he should be -- a bass, a baritone? And then it dawned on me that he shouldn't sing at all, but he has to be someone with an inherent musicality. The part turned out to be very handy from a technical viewpoint, he added, because it helps break up the score's immense number of changes in tempo.

Mr. Keitel is best known for playing thugs and tortured tough guys, characters like Jodie Foster's pimp in Taxi Driver and Mr. White in Reservoir Dogs. He has also embraced full-frontal nudity more enthusiastically than just about any actor of his generation, porn stars excepted. His part in Jerry Springer: The Opera calls for him to play a character who both is and is not the real Jerry Springer, the British-born lawyer and former massage parlor patron and mayor of Cincinnati who went on to make a name for himself in trashy tabloid TV. This theatrical Mr. Springer has a philosophical streak seldom evidenced on the actual show, and at the end of his ordeal in hell he concludes that there are no absolutes of good and evil and that we all live in a glorious state of flux.

The role was proving to be something of a challenge to Mr. Keitel, who studied at the Actors Studio and remains a devoted follower of the Method. Seated at a little table, with two volumes on Buddhist meditation in front of him along with a giant green crystal, he touched on all the legendary names of that acting movement -- Stanislavski, Boleslavsky, Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg -- and threw in Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther for good measure. Acting, he kept saying in the course of an hour's conversation, was a journey. It was a process. He talked about finding the right path and quoted Stella Adler again.

The homework, creating the character through the background, is one of the gifts and joys of being an actor, he explained. That struggle to find your way.

What was making the struggle difficult in this case was the shortage of rehearsal time: just two weeks. You do what you can, he said. The dynamic is something that has to be found. You have to jump into the unknown, and sometimes you have to suffer a lot.

At that point the cast had been assembled for just four days, and he said he was still feeling a little shy about being watched during rehearsal. The process itself is such that -- let's say you're a young Buddhist and, while you're meditating, someone tried tickling your nose with a feather, Mr. Keitel said. That would be very disconcerting.

But eventually he relented and allowed an observer to watch him rehearse the first part of Act I, which calls for Jerry to enter after a Bach-like chorale that begins, My mum used to be my dad, used to be my dad, snip, snip. After the audience is warmed up, he has to sort out the plight of a guy named Dwight, who is simultaneously going out with his fiancee, his fiancee's best friend and a transvestite, all of whom are squabbling. (A diaper fetishist and an overweight pole dancer who's married to a man in the Ku Klux Klan turn up a little later.)

Jerry's big moment here is a dialogue with his inner Valkyrie, or conscience, who in an accusatory soprano aria demands to know how he sleeps at night. I sleep on my back, he replies, and adds: You know, it's easy to occupy the moral high ground. What's more difficult is to confidently occupy the moral low ground.

Michael Brandon, an American actor who played Jerry in London, gave the part a whiny, Woody Allenish inflection. Mr. Keitel, who said he did not want to be reminded about that interpretation lest he be influenced by it, tackled the role like an unhurried version of himself. On the first run-through he was an earnest Jerry, asking Dwight, So who's it going to be -- fiancee, fiancee's friend or transvestite? -- with genuine curiosity. On the second try, after twirling and juggling his microphone while waiting, he came out cooler and tougher, a little wiseguyish. He was the talk show host as Brooklyn-born guy who's been around the block a few times and has seen a thing or two.

The chorus, some 30 voices strong, really got into it this time, singing Loser, loser, loser! to the transvestite. The fiancee and her friend fought with the kind of hair-pulling ferocity that on real TV makes for excellent daytime ratings. Then everyone broke for lunch. The singers whipped out their cellphones and BlackBerrys. Mr. Keitel went back to his dressing room to meditate a bit and work on the next stage of his journey.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Harvey Keitel rehearsing a scene from Jerry Springer: The Opera with Emily Skinner, left, and Laura Shoop. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES)