Past Reviews

Regional Reviews: Minneapolis/St. Paul

Jersey Boys
National Tour

Also see Arthur's reviews of Happy Days —A New Musical, Carousel, For the Loyal, Peter Pan


Hayden Milanes, Drew Seeley, Matthew Dailey,
and Keith Hines

Jersey Boys paid a return visit to Minneapolis last week in the national tour of the Tony-award winning musical now closing in on its 10th year on Broadway. Shows that have been running for a length of time, and that have launched multiple touring productions are sometimes seen as having lost their luster, gotten lazy, or lost the magic that first earned them attention. I can happily—no, exuberantly—report that, at least in this touring company, Jersey Boys is as high-energy, moving, and solid-gold entertaining as ever.

If anything, seeing Jersey Boys again some seven years my first viewing, the experience was even better ... almost every scene, performance, and musical number exploded with more impact than my memory led me to expect. And that is saying something, as I was wowed by it the first time around.

Jersey Boys is the story of the musical group The Four Season, who later morphed into Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Using the group's name as a framing device, the show is divided up into four sections, each narrated by a different group member. Beginning with spring, Tommy DeVito narrates the origins of the group, how bringing Frankie Valli on board crystallized the group's sound, and how, in spite of his own shady lifestyle, the group launched by DeVito had a clean cut image. Come summer, Bob Gaudio, who at age 15 joined the group both as a singer and songwriter, takes the role of narrator. In summer, the group burst out with several huge hits, and became a phenomenon with number one records and non-stop tours. Gaudio clues us in to both the highs and lows that accompanied their huge success.

Act two opens in the fall, and group member Nick Massi, one of Tommy DeVito's original bandmates, narrates. As things do in the autumn, the group matures in shouldering responsibilities, facing losses, and coming to terms with what matters to them each as individuals, not as members of a celebrated group. By the onset of winter, the group has shed its early bloom, to be reborn as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, with Valli narrating his struggle to keep the music and the group's legacy moving forward. A concluding scene at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame allows each group member to offer a reflection on their journey, and a walloping finale.

So what makes Jersey Boys so off-the-charts terrific? Front and center, the songs. For many of us, these songs are the soundtrack of our youth and formative years. "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "C'mon Marianne," "Walk Like a Man," "My Eyes Adored You," "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and many more. They are delivered by the group with complete conviction, backed by an all-engines racing band. The lively numbers are staged with Sergio Trujillo's body-pumping choreography, while the more sedate numbers are performed with an honesty that conveys the emotional freight weighing upon the group.

Aside from the music, director Des McAnuff keeps the entire show moving without pause. Scenes morph from one to another, stage performances overlap and then dissolve into scenes set backstage or in other settings, and back again, without stopping for air. The audience is engaged from the first opening notes—a singer performing "Oh, What a Night" as a rap, in French"—to the high notes that bring the finale to a close. The swirling shifts from one high point to the next seem to form a perfect representation of the whirlwind of success and its aftermath experienced by the group. McAnuff's work here simply amazes.

Then, we get down to the current cast, which without exception, was wonderful. The four principals—Matthew Daily as DeVito, Keith Hines as Massi, Hayden Milanes as Valli, and Drew Seeley as Gaudio—each create real characters, whom we recognize as individuals, not only as group members. They all sing beautifully, with the signature Four Season harmonies alive and well. Barry Anderson plays Bob Crewe, the influential producer who greatly helped to promote the Four Seasons, more in a comedy vein, and more obvious about Crewe being a gay man than I recall from my first trip through the seasons. Thomas Fiscella gives mobster Gyp DeCarlo the right degree of gravitas. As the women in the Season's lives, Jaycie Dotin, Marlana Dunn, and Leslie Rochette play a variety of roles—girlfriends, girl singers, wife, mother, daughter—with distinction to recognize each character and their part in the overall story.

Klara Zieglerova's utilitarian set design is a skeleton framework of girders, with a cat-walk spanning the rear wall of the stage, and backdrops representing the industrial grit of New Jersey, the glitz of nightclubs, the buzz of recording studios, and other locales. Jess Goldstein's costumes wonderfully differentiate the Four Seasons' changing fortunes, as well as the changes in style through the 1960s. Howard Binkley's lighting design adds to the motion and mood of each musical number, and creates effects that put us, the audience, on stage with our stars—deeply adding to our understanding of the impossible dazzle that surrounded these four young guys from unassuming backgrounds.

At a point late in the show we are reminded that the Four Seasons' music was not the sound of social unrest and social change identified with the 1960s—the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Doors, the Who, and the like. The Four Seasons portrayed the life being lived by the majority of Americans, even as change was all around them—the heartache of a failed relationship, the joy of a new romance, finding the grit to face your worries like a man. Clearly, the yearning for their music was enormous, and the fact that it remains so well-loved 50 years later speaks to a universal quality.

Jersey Boys ends with a finale as high energy as anything that comes before it, with the song "Who Loves You?" I think that every member of the full house wanted to respond to these Jersey boys "We do!"

Jersey Boys played April 28 through May 3, 2015 at the Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN. For other tour cities and dates, go to www.jerseyboysinfo.com/tour/.

Book: Marshall Brickman Rick Elice; Music: Bob Gaudio; Lyrics: Bob Crewe; Director: Des McAnuff; Choreography: Sergio Trujillo; Music Supervision, Vocal/Dance Arrangements, and Incidental Music: Ron Melrose; Set Design: Klara Zieglerova; Costume Design: Jess Goldstein; Lighting Design: Howard Binkley; Sound Design: Steve Canyon Kennedy; Projection Design: Michael Clark; Wig and Hair Design: Charles LaPointe; Orchestrations: Steve Orich; Music Coordinator: John Miller; Music Director: Ben Hartman; Casting: Tara Rubin Casting; Technical Supervisor: Peter Fulbright; Company Manager: Michael Camp; Production Stage Manager: Mark Tynan; Associate Producer: Lauren Mitchell; Executive Producer: Sally Campbell Morse

Cast: Barry Anderson (Bob Crewe), Tommaso Antico (Officer Petrillo, Hank Majewski, Crewe's PA, Accountant, Joe Long and others), Matthew Dailey (Tommy DeVito), Jaycie Dotin (Church Lady, Angel, Lorraine, Miss Frankie Nolan, Bob's party girl, and others), Marlana Dunn (Mary Delgado, Angel and others), Thomas Fiscella (Gyp DeCarlo and others), De'lon Grant (French rap star, Detective one, Hal Miller, Barry Belson, police officer, Davis and others), Keith Hines (Nick Massi), Hayden Milanes (Frank Valli), Miguel Jarquin-Moreland (Frankie Valli, Sat. mat. & Sun. evening.), John Rochette (Nick DeVito, Stosh, Norman Waxman, Charlie Calello and others), Leslie Rochette (Frankie's mother, Nick's date, Angel, Francine and others), Drew Seeley (Bob Gaudio), Jonny Wexler (Joey, recording studio engineer, and others), Keith White (Detective two, Donnie, Billie Dixon, and others).


Photo: Jeremy Daniel


- Arthur Dorman


Also see the season schedule for the Minneapolis - St. Paul region