Jersey Boys

Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage to October 20, 2024
Tickets from $39 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com

Posted September 12, 2024

My guest was vibrating with excitement throughout Jersey Boys, the Arts Club’s 2024-25 season opener at the Stanley. It was her music, her time, and she knew all the words to all the songs: “Sherry/Sherry, baby/ Can you come out tonight?” to “Big girls don’t cry/Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry” and “Oh, What a Night.”

This was not my music. I went from Bill Haley and The Comets (“Rock Around the Clock”) to Elvis Presley (“You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog”) directly on to Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey and all the jazz greats. And then on to Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and beyond.

So it was a very good thing my guest is a real Frankie Valli fan. Fanatic, in fact.

Jersey Boys is what is called a jukebox musical – a musical in which the songs are well-known, pop songs. From Wikipedia: “Some jukebox musicals use a wide variety of songs, while others confine themselves to songs performed by one singer or band, or written by one songwriter.” In the case of Jersey Boys, with book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, the group is The Four Seasons (Tommy DeVito, Nick Massi, Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio) and the format is documentary: the rise and fall of The Four Seasons.

But here’s the interesting twist: the story unfolds in four parts (Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter) each narrated by one of the four and from each individual band member’s perspective. If Tommy (the first narrator) claims he was fully responsible for discovering Frankie Valli, Frankie (the fourth narrator) sets the story straight. He was already on his way.

We learn a lot about these guys beginning with convictions for breaking and entering, jailtime, hard times, road tours and huge successes to eventual breakup. It’s a trip.

Under Julie Tomaino’s direction, whether you love the music or not, this is a terrific production with a live band directed by Ken Cormier, choreographed by Tomaino, set design (Ryan Cormack), lighting design (Sophie Tang) and costume design – lots of very sharp, fitted jackets –  by Barbara Clayden.

But it’s the actors/singers themselves that make this show fly. Darren Martens, as Tommy DeVito, kicks things off with a lot of swagger. DeVito is a bad boy, full of ideas and full of himself. We may not like this character but we have to admire his chutzpah.

Tanner Zerr is Nick Massi. A big guy with not a lot to say but when he says it, it counts. Massi goes off on a wonderful rant about Tommy and towels late in the musical. Zerr has a lovely deep, deep voice that adds balance to the song styling.

When Bob Gaudio (Jason Sakaki) is recruited, things really start to happen for The Four Seasons. After a slow start, Gaudio writes three big hits in a row that catapult the group into stardom: “Sherry”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man”. Sakaki is an extremely engaging actor and he makes it clear that without Gaudio, The Four Seasons might not have succeeded as spectacularly as they did.

Frankie Valli and his falsetto is the guy that made The Four Seasons unique. And Elliot Lazar is the guy that makes this production stand out. Lazar takes Valli on a journey from a somewhat shy guy to a confident star; Lazar becomes a singing, dancing dynamo on the Stanley stage. You may not love falsetto but, damn, he’s good. The cast is completed by Constantine Antoniou as the mobster DeCarlo; Sarah Cantuba, Graham Coffeng, Caleb Di Pomponio, Tiana Jung, Emma Pedersen, Hall Wesley Rogers and Jordan Stanley.

Jersey Boys, so named because of the working class, Belleville, New Jersey origins of the guys, is a blast from the sociological past as well as the musical past. The scene of Gaudio’s ‘deflowering’ , for example, is cringe-inducing. But that was then, and now is now.

The harmonies are grand. The energy is huge. The show is big. Opening nighters loved it. My guest was crazy about it. Not my music but, hey,  I just found myself whistling, “”Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”,  just the same.