Chicago Critic Highly Recommends Jersey Boys!
October 15th, 2007Chicago Sun-Times Theater Critic Hedy Weiss says Jersey Boys is “pure platinum”! The 2006 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, has arrived in Chicago in a supercharged knockout of a national touring company production. At Sunday’s opening, Valli and Gaudio came up on stage to take bows and hug their remarkable doppelgangers, giving the audience a chance to see precisely how shrewd and accurate the casting of this production has been.
This show is platinum, with nearly three dozen songs (most the work of Gaudio and producer-lyricist Bob Crewe) that hit the top of the charts decades ago but remain irresistible. And they now have been ideally “slotted” into a frank, multi-perspective history of this often-volatile group, courtesy of a canny book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice that follows its rise, fall, reconfiguring and brief reunion.
As Valli, Jarrod Spector — small, dark and sad-faced — not only transforms his voice from boyish falsetto to richer, darker, octave-spanning instrument, but with the most subtle shifts in movement and demeanor ages from 16 to 60. It is a big performance, yet one remarkable for its introversion.
Tall, gangly, perfectly droll Drew Gehling has similarly captured Gaudio, the true creative genius and lone middle-class striver in the group — the songwriter and businessman already a teen prodigy when he joined the group.
Jeremy Kushnier is spot-on as the angry Tommy, the guy with the knife-edge temper and bad habits. And Michael Ingersoll is an ideally quirky Nick Massi, “the Ringo” of the group, who finally walks away.
Visit the Chicago Sun-Times website for the full review.
What a treat for my wife and I to see the best musical of our lives-walk out side after the show and shake hands with Frankie Valli & Jarrod Spector-I listened to their music while in Viet Nam in the 60′s and then get to meet Frankie Valli in person in Chicago after all these years-life doesn’t get any better than that-We will go back to see this again with a group of our friends-God Bless America & The Jersey Boys.
Phil & Diane from Elgin,Il.
Comment by Phil Jelen-Elgin,Il. — October 15, 2007 @ 8:54 pm