Jersey Boys

(The banner on the plaza in front of the Ahmanson.)

JERSEY BOYS
Ahmanson Theatre, May 31 2007, 8pm

Jersey Boys and Wicked are Broadway’s two current biggest box office smashes, and now both of them are playing in Los Angeles – and both are box office monsters here as well. I have to admit that I just haven’t been very interested in Jersey Boys for much of its history: I skipped it when it was doing its pre-Broadway tryout in San Diego (at the La Jolla Playhouse), and both times I’ve been in New York since the show opened, I haven’t bothered trying to get tickets. Now it’s here, and I figured I would finally see what all that hype was about.

The show is fun – not necessarily great theater - but nevertheless an energetic, entertaining and dare I say irresistible evening. Subtitled “The story of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons,” the show is a kind of live Behind the Music documentary, telling the Four Seasons’ individual stories, from rough living in New Jersey and jail time to major recording sensation. Famous songs like “Sherry,” “Walk Like a Man” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry” are spread throughout, as they come up in chronology or as their context and inspiration are explained.

It’s easy to understand why the show is selling out: its appeal reaches beyond the theatre going crowd and gets a) everyone who grew up with those songs, and b) everyone who has ever even heard these songs somewhere (and most of us have). Inside the theatre, you're drawn in and have a fantastic time thanks to Des McAnuff’s slick direction and Sergio Trujillo’s brisk choreography. When things start to get the least bit boring, or a song goes on for just a little too long, the entire perspective shifts to something unexpected. In "Sherry," the first famous Four Seasons song we hear in the show, instead of getting the song straight on, we are watching the boys sing it to the side, into a camera on the "Ed Sullivan Show" and their images are projected on to giant screens. Just a verse later, it switches to what we want - a full out performance for us, tha udience. And the climactic point in Act 2, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” is in particular staged to draw maximum impact. McAnuff and book writers Marshall Brickmand and Rick Elice tease the song and relentlessly build anticiaption for it, and so the crowd explodes when the amiable Christian Kale Jones as Franki Valli launches into the song and blows it out of the house.

Speaking of cast members, it would be so easy for this show to sink into the territory of bad karaoke, but through a combination of the direction and the likeable, talented cast, we forget that these guys aren’t the real Four Seasons. We go for it.

Still though, I have reservations about the show. It wasn’t quite a theater piece in the traditional sense – their lives are sped through and there’s not much of a dramatic arc to care about. The story feels force fit, and really, it's about those songs. McAnuff thankfully keeps things moving before we get too involved in mundane backstory. As a musical theatre junkie, It's not one of my favorite theatrical experiences and not a show that has repeat value for me. But still, I had a grand enough time at the show, and I’m glad I saw it once to see what all the hype was about.


Photos: (1) Christopher Kale Jones as Franki Valli, Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio, Deven May as Tommy DeVito and Michael Ingersoll as Nick Massi. (2) The full company in the finale of the show.