Oh, what a (slightly lackluster) night! On Friday evening, a touring production of the mega-hit jukebox musical “Jersey Boys” arrived at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre. The curtains opened to an undeniably delighted crowd, faithfully clapping in time to the catchy, high-pitched pop crooning of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
“Jersey Boys” charts the quartet’s rise from its working-class mob-entangled roots in Belleville, New Jersey to international success, and the women, excess and family trouble that comes with success. The musical is divided into seasons, and each season is narrated by a different member of the band — troublemaking self-appointed leader Tommy Devito (Matthew Dailey) narrates in the spring, boyish writer-genius Bob Gaudio (Drew Seeley) in the summer, the group’s Ringo Nick Massi (Keith Hines, whose bizarre deadpan elicited the most laughs) in the fall and the star Frankie Valli (Aaron De Jesus) in the winter. Working-class New Jersey values lie at the very heart of this show. Their loyalty to each other is admirable and destructive, prizing fraternity over wives, girlfriends, bank accounts and common sense.
Toward the very end of “Jersey Boys,” Frankie describes the “high point” of his rollercoaster of a career as the moments “when everything dropped away and all there was was the music.” The same can be said of the show itself. “Jersey Boys” is strongest when the fairly perfunctory rags-to-riches-to-decadent-decline story is set aside in favor of the music. Its high point is indeed when all distractions — the set, the context, the flashy projections — fall away and all there is are four talented actor-imitators facing the audience in gleaming suits, transforming theatergoers into a giddy sea of fans. The Four Seasons’ irresistible Top 40 hits, from “Sherry” to “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)”, have been smartly cherry picked to suit the biographical plot of the musical.
The conceit of projecting the actor’s faces onto a screen as the onstage band faces a camera, in mimicry of a live studio performance should have been a neat trick. Instead, it is a jarring dose of reality. Biography, particularly on the stage, benefits from the distance of theater. Being confronted so closely with an imitation, no matter how uncanny or talented, is a disorienting reminder that “Jersey Boys” isn’t the real deal.
In the early days of its Broadway run, “Jersey Boys” was electric. It was never a profound piece of theater, but it was not meant to be one. The original show’s rapid pace understandably prized relentless energy over slow-burning, complex character study, quick to balance the dark melancholy of these men’s lives with their cheery pop music. This newest production lacks some of that freshness and dynamism, rendering the weaknesses of the musical more visible.
Where the skimmed quality of “Jersey Boys”’ drama once felt like just enough, here there is an air of going through the motions. The musical’s treacly tendencies feel pronounced, with schmaltzy orchestration marking out the designated sad moment and then hastily returning to some tunes. The show’s most effective emotional moment — the tragic death of Frankie’s daughter — works so well precisely because it occurs in almost total, stunned silence. Unfortunately, the quiet is interrupted by “Fallen Angel,” an unbearably cloying song that serves as a reminder of the more maudlin inclinations of the 1970s.
The musical’s other great weakness is Tommy Devito, a character so thoroughly obnoxious, manipulative and downright mean that it takes an enormous well of charisma to make Devito palatable, a quality Matthew Dailey does not quite have. While Dailey easily captures Devito’s sleazy confidence, he fails to convey why anybody on earth would tolerate him for the length of a bad joke and a short jail stint — let alone many years — no matter how great a hold New Jersey loyalty has over the conscience.
When asked about the musical’s enduring draw, swing cast member Jenna Nicole Schoen pointed to one of Bob Gaudio’s lines in the show when he notes that their fans have always been the average blue-collar person. “I think that what makes it so appealing now is that people are transported to that time,” Schoen said.
For all its flaws, “Jersey Boys” is still a lovable, appealing trip down memory lane — or for younger audiences, a primer in glossy nostalgia and the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. This is the kind of warm, joyful widely digestible populism the show has peddled so successfully for a decade. If only it still had that spark of spring and not the withering hints of winter.
Contact Miyako Singer at msinger@dailycal.org.