Richard Thomas (born 1964) is a British musician, writer, and comedy actor. He is best known for composing, writing and scoring the award-winning '' Jerry Springer: The Opera'' with book and additional lyrics co-written with

Stewart Lee Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English comedian, screenwriter, and television director. His stand-up routine is characterised by repetition, internal reference, deadpan delivery, and consistent breaking of the fourth wall. Lee b ...

. Thomas collected the

Laurence Olivier Award The Laurence Olivier Awards, or simply the Olivier Awards, are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre in London at an annual ceremony in the capital. The awards were originally known a ...

for Best Musical Score in 2004. Richard Thomas's comedy career began in 1987, doing a musical act on keyboards. In 2000, he wrote and performed a one-act opera called ''Tourette's Diva'' with four actors, which aired at the

Edinburgh Festival Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

. Thomas had the idea for an opera based on

Jerry Springer Gerald Norman Springer (born February 13, 1944) is a British-American broadcaster, journalist, actor, producer, former lawyer, and politician. He hosted the tabloid talk show '' Jerry Springer'' between September 30, 1991 and July 26, 2018, an ...

at this time, and wrote it over the next two years, chiefly in workshops at

Battersea Arts Centre The Battersea Arts Centre ("BAC") is a performance space specialising in theatre productions. Located near Clapham Junction railway station in Battersea, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, it was formerly Battersea Town Hall. It is a Grade I ...

. Thomas would offer a "Beer for an Idea", where any audience members submitting a good idea would be rewarded with a can of Foster's and poor ideas with a supermarket

store brand A private label, also called a private brand or private-label brand, is a brand owned by a company, offered by that company alongside and competing with brands from other businesses. A private-label brand is almost always offered exclusively by th ...

. After a number of small scale performances of the first act, which was in much the same shape as it remains today, the second act (where the characters descend into

hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell ...

) was vague and unformed. Thomas brought his friend Stewart Lee in to assist with the writing. Six months later, the opera was in a far more recognisable state, and was snapped up by the National Theatre. Thomas has also worked on BBC comedy shows such as ''

Attention Scum ''Attention Scum'' was a 2001 television comedy series created by Simon Munnery and Stewart Lee. It starred Munnery as his "League Against Tedium" character and contained acerbic stand-up routines atop a transit van and sketches including mainsta ...

'' and '' This Morning with Richard Not Judy''. Starting on 25 February 2007,

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...

aired his series, ''

Kombat Opera Presents ''Kombat Opera Presents'' is a BBC2 comedy show. The comedy parodies British television programmes by transforming them into operas. The music for the series was written by Richard Thomas, with the series having its origins in the ''Kombat Opera ...

...'', comprising five standalone musical parodies of well-known television programmes. Thomas wrote the

libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major li ...

for

Mark-Anthony Turnage Mark-Anthony Turnage CBE (born 10 June 1960) is a British composer of classical music. Biography Turnage was born in Corringham, Essex. He began composing at age nine and at fourteen began studying at the junior section of the Royal College of ...

's 2011 opera ''

Anna Nicole ''Anna Nicole'' is an English opera in 2 acts and 16 scenes, with music by Mark-Anthony Turnage to an English libretto by Richard Thomas. Based on the life of American model Anna Nicole Smith, the opera received its première on 17 February 201 ...

'', and co-wrote music for the 2010 film '' Uncle David'' as a part of the Avant-Garde Alliance. In 2013 Thomas was commissioned by London's

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

choir The Pink Singers, to bring his humor to writing a piece celebrating the styles and techniques employed by a choir during performances. The Pink Singers performed the première of the resulting two pieces during their 30th anniversary concert at the Troxy Theatre, London. In 2014 he wrote the lyrics for the stage musical of ''Made in Dagenham''.

Works

Theatre / Opera

* Tourette's Diva (2000), music and lyrics * Jerry Springer: The Opera (2001), music and lyrics *

(2011), libretto * the stage musical of ''Made in Dagenham'' (2014), lyrics

Film / Television

* This Morning with Richard Not Judy *

... (2007)

References

External links

Official websiteInterview with Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Richard 1964 births British male actors English classical composers English male classical composers English male dramatists and playwrights English opera composers Male opera composers English opera librettists English gay actors LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Living people English gay writers 21st-century British composers 21st-century British male musicians