Jersey Boys Continues to Wow! Minneapolis!
April 2nd, 2008Minneapolis critics (and audiences) can’t take their eyes off the Jersey Boys national tour! Check out the latest!
MSPMAG.com’s Steve Marsh took his mom to Jersey Boys last week. He wondered how good could a musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons be? “Sherry Babyâ€? “Big Girls Don’t Cryâ€? He thought he ws headed for bad dinner theater and was missing March Madness on top of everything else. Well, he loved it!
The dirty history of rock ‘n’ roll is all there in this show—these guys were as big as the Beatles in the ’60s. They sold 175 million records. They cheated on their wives on the road. And fell apart over bad debt, not wussy, British-type “creative differences.†And their four outsized personalities—Frankie the Saint, Tommy the Hood, Bobby the Genius, and Nicky the Lazy Bum—are each distinctly drawn.
And yeah, those songs? “Sherry Baby� “Big Girls Don’t Cry� “Walk Like a Man� “Who Loves You� Way better than I remembered. I think the whole crowd—filled with a lot of people of my mom’s age and stage—morphed into one collective teenage girl on the strength of the Four Seasons’ harmonic voice meld. I’m sure this show can bring out the teenage girl in anybody, actually. The Four Seasons’ songbook is American opera—mass produced, gender-bending, and filled with off-the-dork hooks. If you don’t try hitting one Frankie Valli falsetto walking out of the theater . . .Well, you’re a bigger man than I.
From Anne Nicolai, TC Daily Planet:
In Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Tommy and Frankie (Christopher Kale Jones) establish a bond of brotherhood that makes both their inevitable split-up and their reconciliation believable. Indeed, the triumph of friendship over just about everything else elevates Jersey Boys from an energetic pop musical to a satisfying drama with a great soundtrack. The show is so well edited that I can’t think of a single scene, song or line that I’d take out, which makes Jersey Boys the tightest musical I’ve seen since Rent.
loved it! U were all great – saw it tuesday in Minneapolis -took the tour with ‘bob’ after the show he was wonderful!
Comment by Gary mainor — April 16, 2008 @ 8:37 pm