30 June 2009
Leta Keens
The latest selection on the jukebox musical juggernaut is Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, reincarnated in the award-winning Jersey Boys.
Take four young men born on the wrong side of the tracks in a gritty New Jersey neighbourhood. Send a couple of them to prison and throw in some mob ties, money troubles, substance abuse, infighting and marital problems along the way.
It sounds like the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster, but mixed with a string of evergreen hits (including Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Oh What A Night and Walk Like A Man) plus the most recognisable harmonies on the airwaves, it’s Jersey Boys, the musical show based on the real-life but little-known story of 1960s pop stars Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
The combination of strong storyline and irresistible music helped the show win a Tony Award for Best Musical in New York in 2006, and an Olivier Award for Best New Musical earlier this year for its London production. Jersey Boys’ new Melbourne production is the seventh version of the show since its premiere on Broadway in 2005 – excluding an earlier incarnation at the La Jolla Playhouse in California. All the shows are still running and all have the same creative team behind them.
It’s one of a string of what are known as jukebox musicals – stage shows based around instantly familiar hit songs and, occasionally, the lives of popular singers and groups. With varying degrees of success, stages have been filled with shows revolving around the music of the likes of ABBA, Dusty Springfield, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Blondie and Peter Allen. According to the chief theatre critic of The New York Times, Ben Brantley, Jersey Boys is one of the better ones.
“It’s actually about the singers of the songs, not a cobbling together of Top 40 hits into a silly story line,” he says. “And it’s done with great slickness and efficiency.”
You can blame – or credit – Mamma Mia! (the 1999 show of ABBA hits) for the spate of jukebox musicals, says Brantley. “There were earlier, financially successful examples of the form, but Mamma Mia! was the one that had producers bringing out their xerox machines. It all seemed so easy: pre-existing songs and brand-name recognition.”
It wasn’t only producers caught up in the mood, says Richard Hester, production supervisor of Jersey Boys everywhere, who spends his time circumnavigating the globe from his New York base to oversee them all. Two founding members of the Four Seasons, Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli, “saw the success of shows like Mamma Mia! and went to scriptwriters Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman and said, ‘We think we have something for you here.’ They had a huge catalogue of music, but the more the writers heard of their life stories, the more they realised that’s what the real story was.”
They’d kept the less savoury aspects of their lives hidden for decades. Everyone knew their music, says Hester, “but they weren’t the boy band you could advertise and make sound wholesome”.
Sound is essentially what the Four Seasons are all about, and both Gaudio and Valli have been working with all casts to ensure it’s authentic. “Rather than absolutely slavishly re-creating the Four Seasons sound, we’re re-creating the sound in a theatrical context,” says Hester. “Having Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli actually keep an eye on it has been amazing. Bob will be in Melbourne for some weeks before we open, to work with the boys.”
The “boys” Hester is talking about are four-time World Irish Dance champion Bobby Fox, who plays Frankie Valli, Scott Johnson as Tommy DeVito, Glaston Toft as Nick Massi and Stephen Mahy playing Gaudio. “Pretty much if you go to see Jersey Boys anywhere, you’ll see Jersey Boys,” he says. “But we’ve found in all the different companies we have, the combination of the four boys brings its own energy and slightly colours each production.”
The appeal to audiences, says Brantley, “especially middle-aged audiences, is being able to hear songs from earlier, younger days re-created by singers who are still young enough to generate the same energy that their prototypes did earlier”.
It’s a form of musical that will be around for some time, he believes. In years to come he wouldn’t be surprised to see an ’N Sync musical, or a more brooding Radiohead singing saga. “And Britney Spears is just waiting to be transformed into a show.”
Jersey Boys, Princess Theatre Melbourne from July 4. Qantas is a proud sponsor.
Source: Qantas The Australian Way July 2009