June 9, 2012

Jersey Boys First Natl Tour Top-Notch in Tulsa!

June 9th, 2012

James D. Watts Jr. has posted a fantastic review of the JERSEY BOYS first national tour production in Tulsa! Here’s a preview:

The four guys telling those stories in this production are top-notch. I’ve heard other actors in the role of Frankie Valli who do a more exact job of recreating Valli’s distinctive falsetto, but I haven’t seen anyone give a more deeply felt, more finely nuanced performance than Bwarie, whether it’s as the wide-eyed young Frankie at the start or a grieving father at the end.

He’s also the most physically active Frankie, dropping into the splits in some of the dance moments. And Bwarie’s singing has great energy and passion, especially in the second act, when each performance is Frankie Valli basically singing to save his life — for example, in a bravura performance of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” where all the desperation turns into triumph.

Gardiner is just about perfect as DeVito — a tight, compact bundle of single-minded ambition and potential violence, the sort of guy who always talks about getting out of “the neighborhood” but can never leave it behind. He delivers DeVito’s wiseguy patter so naturally you would think Gardiner had just stepped off the red-eye from Newark.

Boyd has a singing voice about as strong and wide-ranging as Bwarie’s, as he demonstrates in “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).” And he has a fine sense of comic timing makes his delivery of Gaudio’s droll one-liners crackle with dry wit. And Boyd projects so confident a presence that, even when Gaudio begins to move out of the spotlight, Boyd continues to make him fascinating to watch.

Lomenda makes the most of Massi’s relatively few lines, so that just about everything he says comes as a surprise, like his hilarious outburst about DeVito’s personal habits in the midst of a tense scene involving a couple of mobsters.

Visit TulsaWorld.com to read the whole review, which includes praise for the ensemble cast members!

1 Comment »

  1. This cast is a fine tuned machine…with a wonderfully relaxed delivery that makes the whole thing seem REAL.

    Comment by Gladys (Phillygalg) — June 10, 2012 @ 4:02 am

RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI

Please leave a comment