JERSEY BOYS
Jersey Boys, Theatre Royal, King Street, 18 September 2010 “for at least 8 months,” according to an usher. Photos Jeff Busby
WONDERFUL music, a rich and true story; plenty of pathos and loads of laughs. Who could ask for more? Okay, if you want more, then add to the mix a beautifully balanced and high octane cast; excellent musicians; hot choreography and top production values. Enough now?
Jersey Boys is slick as Brylcreem, but that doesn’t mean it lacks heart, no no no. It’s more that the show runs as smoothly as a Rolls Royce and its very powerful engine is a songbook of some of the best and most enduring pop hits of the early 60s. You may or may not be a fan of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, either first time around or in the more recent rap homage, but you’d have to be a cranky old corpse indeed to resist the songs and keep your feet still.
New Jersey in the first half of the 20th century was a numbingly ordinary place to grow up, particularly for Italian migrant teenagers with ambition and little else. According to the Jersey boys’ own account, petty crime and a prison with a revolving door, or dead end jobs for the lucky ones, were the preferred career options. Showbiz was the fantasy escape route: it had worked for Frank Sinatra, after all, but by the late 50s the music biz was changing. Sinatra’s smooth swing and big ballads were so mom ’n’ pop and a new style was bubbling up from under: the vocal harmonising group.
Soon to be known as “doo wop” because of the scat-like chorus lines, the best and most imitated were black (African-American) groups starting with the Ink Spots and continuing with such luminaries as The Coasters, The Imperials, The Orioles, The Platters and on and on. For white kids, the role models were more anaemic: the Four Freshmen, for instance, were wildly successful but antiseptic and dull as sanitaryware. They spawned The Lettermen, the Four Preps and other college-worthies, but there was a whole other sound waiting to be discovered that lay somewhere between the black and the white.
That sound was finally created by the unique voice of Frankie Valli, born Francis Castelluccio, and the songs written for him by Bob Gaudio and how they and the Four Seasons stumbled around in the dark of bowling alley obscurity and finally hit it big is the story of Jersey Boys.
Somewhere between rock’n’roll and doo wop, the sound of the Four Seasons produced the instantly recognizable and sing-able “Sherry”, Rag Doll”, Big Girls Don’t Cry, “Walk Like a Man”, “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” and others; and what’s even more fun in the show, is discovering the stories behind the songs and behind Gaudio (Stephen May), Valli (Bobby Fox, original mover and shaker and troublemaker Tommy de Vito (Scott Johnson) and wondrously lugubrious bass singer and bass player Nick Massi (Glaston Toft).
The principals are absolutely terrific actors and singers; the sound they create is thrilling and authentic. The ensemble cast is equally strong with Jason Te Patu shining in a variety of roles and Daniel Scott making more than the most of his turn as the queenie producer Bob Crewe.
Jersey Boys is already a huge hit and deserves to be. It’s the kind of show you could see over and over – and many will. Booking now for the foreseeable future, despite a successful run in Melbourne, you could do no better than to do yourself and your family a favour and be among the rush to the box office as we head into summer. Be warned, though, if you’re taking the impressionable young and older folk: the language is a lot more eff and blind than is historically authentic.
