
Oh hear America singing, citizens of New York, as you never have heard it before. Hearken to your everyday sisters and brothers -- the lost, the lonely, the fetishists, the freaks -- as their voices swell and meld into one common chord of longing: to be seen, to be heard, to be (oh yes) famous. Will it turn out that the great American musical of...

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...

Just months after plans to transfer it to New York were announced in 2004, ''Jerry Springer: The Opera,'' the prize-winning musical that opened to raves in London, stirred up more trouble than a roomful of transsexual Klansmen (and the women who love them). The Broadway transfer soon fell apart. But now a couple of New York producers have plans to...