With 29 performers and eight musicians, Jerry Springer—The Opera is Bailiwick Repertory’s largest-ever production. Every bit as lurid and scatological as its trash TV inspiration, it’s fulsomely vulgar, sacrilegious, shockingly funny and thoroughly theatrical. The Ku Klux Klan tap-dance number brings down the house. Richard Thomas’ dazzling score draws from Bach motets, Handel, Broadway song-and-dance, Andrew Lloyd Webber, liturgical music and Marc Blitzstein offering 37 numbers, few of which run over two minutes. Melding musical theater with blasphemous satirical pageantry, Jerry Springer—The Opera is a whopping theatrical bang for the buck, jammed with musical moments and story incidents. Through Aug. 19, Bailiwick Repertory, 1229 W. Belmont; 773-883-1090; $25-$40. Photo by David Zak