Playwright: Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice; Music: Bob Gaudio; Lyrics: Bob Crewe. At: LaSalle Bank Theatre, 18 W. Monroe. Phone: 312-902-1400; $25-$95. Runs through: April 18
Near the end of Jersey Boys, the 2006 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical based upon the lives of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, one guy says being inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the greatest honor you could ever receive. I disagree.
I feel being immortalized in a hit Broadway musical is a greater way of being celebrated than having your hit tunes stored in a Cleveland museum or culled for oldies CD compilations sold on TV. Think about it: Would the jazz great Fats Waller or stripper Gypsy Rose Lee have such a legendary status today if their work wasn't constantly being celebrated and dramatized respectively in stage revivals of Ain't Misbehavin' or Gypsy?
By being transformed into musical theater characters of amazingly talented New Jersey guys who skyrocket to fame on their unique rock-and-roll sound, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons will live on and on as Jersey Boys keeps on being staged.
Broadway is littered with jukebox musicals that crashed and burned despite having song catalogues of Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan or The Beach Boys to name a few. What sets Jersey Boys apart is book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice keep the songs sequentially attached to their creators instead of trying to shoehorn them into other contexts like the brainless ABBA campfest of Mamma Mia.
Having a dynamic director like Des McAnuff ( The Who's Tommy ) who knows how to keep all the great stage pictures and heartfelt emotions moving at a constantly cinematic pace is priceless, especially in Klara Zieglerova's whiz-bang set of moving locales lit to moody perfection by lighting designer Howell Binkley.
It also helps to have a tireless cast who perform marathon singing with strong acting chops showing the difficulties that come with massive fame, fortune and mob ties. Drew Gehling as songwriter Bob Gaudio, Michael Ingersoll as bass Nick Massi, Jeremy Kushnier as wiseguy Tommy DeVito and, especially, Jarrod Spector as Frankie Valli are all great performers, dispelling the slightest notion that you're watching what is essentially a super-talented tribute band.
Great character work also comes from Craig Laurie as effete record producer Bob Crewe, Rashad Naylor in a slew of characters alongside the trio of Jenny Lee Ramos, Lauren Marshall and Lyndsey Cole, who dizzyingly play all the women's roles.
Right now what overwhelmingly helps Jersey Boys is the heartfelt nostalgia of aging baby boomer audiences who once danced to, grew up with or fell in love alongside these distinctive tunes. I guess it's a generational thing, but I wasn't moved to instantly applaud as other audience members recognized song hits like Walk Like a Man or Can't Take My Eyes Off You. My first exposure to The Four Seasons was hearing Sherry on TV commercials for cherry licorice and Big Girls Don't Cry as a Sesame Street educational parody, Big Birds Don't Fly.
Even if Jersey Boys is a by-the-numbers stage bio, it's so slickly produced and entertaining that it's still an energizing night of theater. Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons couldn't have asked for better show-biz immortality than Jersey Boys.
